Disguised Toast’s VALORANT team costs US$500k, more than the VCT Champions 2022 prize
The streamer is paying his players out of his own pocket for now
Popular streamer Jeremy “Disguised Toast” Wang isn’t holding back on his first venture into the VALORANT esports scene.
In a livestream on Monday (16 January), the Taiwanese-Canadian content creator revealed that his team, Disguised (DSG), currently costs about US$500,000 a year.
This is higher than the US$300,000 grand prize that LOUD, the winners of the VALORANT Champions Tour (VCT) 2022, received last year.
Disguised Toast said on this stream that this was significantly higher than what he had budgeted in the first place, which was about US$250,000 to US$300,000.
When pro player Yassine "Subroza" Taoufik asked Disguised Toast about the players' salaries in a co-stream, Toast told him to guess, and he'd tell him if it was higher or lower.
Subroza consequently asked if his players are paid US$5,000 per month, to which the DSG founder said that the amount was "higher than that."
Disguised Toast’s team is led by former 100 Thieves and T1 player Josh “steel” Nissan and coached by former Counter-Strike: Global Offensive pro player Kyle “OCEAN” O’Brien.
The other four players are Damion "XXiF" Cook, Drake "Exalt" Branly, Joseph "clear" Allen, and Amgalan "Genghsta" Nemekhbayar.
The team quickly proved that Disguised Toast was right to believe in them after qualifying for the VCT North America Challengers.
DSG, led by steel, went on a perfect 7-0 record in the NA Challengers open qualifier, defeating teams Drift, Coconut Munchers, Entertainment District, Where is Fullerton, and Team Fish Taco.
For now, Disguised Toast is paying his players out of his own pocket. In a later live stream, the Taiwanese-Canadian content creator said they didn't make any money from qualifying for NA Challengers and that finding sponsors who could help him finance the team would take a while.
“Sponsors don’t happen in two days,” he said. “You can’t convince a billion-dollar company to give you their money in two days. That’s not how society works.”
His latest streams were entitled “bro I need to stream TFT (TeamFight Tactics) to fund DSG, I’m broke,” and even joked that he has been playing video games instead of enjoying Taiwan in order to “fund my VALORANT team”.
For DSG, the road ahead includes the NA Challengers, which will run from 1 February to 17 March. The VALORANT team will face stiffer competition from M80, FaZeClan, TSM, Shopify Rebellion, G2 Esports, The Guard, Team BreakThru, Oxygen Esports, Dark Ratio, and the two teams that emerge from the NA Challengers Last Chance qualifier.
Anna is a freelance writer and photographer. She is a gamer who loves RPGs and platformers, and is a League of Legends geek. She's also a food enthusiast who loves a good cup of black coffee.
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