The announcement of an announcement is something of a meme at this point, but Immortals and Noah Whinston have taken it a step further, with the announcement of an announcement event this month. The long-anticipated, extremely badly kept secret about the new team joining the org under the Made In Brazil (MiBR) tag is finally about to come to pass, with something of a spectacular planned for the day of the deal being signed.
The post, made in Portuguese of course, was released on an ESL page, with the event due to take place at 5pm GMT on June 23rd at the Transamerica Expo Centre in Sao Paolo. Not for Immortals is the simple reveal and wave, either, as they have something quite fun planned for the fans, with a few big names involved for good measure.
Alongside the smile and wave, there will be a few showmatches, where with any luck the new players will be able to achieve a better winrate than they have enjoyed in recent competitive outings. One show match looks to feature old MiBR stars taking on the new, richer crop, with the second a game against some online contest winners that has the potential to be very embarrassing for the professionals.
Pushing the boat out
That’s pushing the boat out already for this sort of thing, with most teams happy to do a tweet, or maybe a short video playing on the player name, but IMT have gone further. There will be a live stream of the games too, cast in English and Portuguese, so you can watch their expensive new acquisitions from anywhere in the world, the CSGO equivalent of doing keep-ups on the pitch in front of the waiting press.
On the native side of things, Willian ‘gORDOx’ Lemos and Bernardo ‘BiDa’ Moura will cast the game in Portuguese, no doubt to thousands of expectant Brazilian fans, and the English stream has some big names on it too. Jason ‘Moses’ O’Toole will be alongside Team Liquid’s Wilton ‘zews’ Prado to bring the English-speaking fans all the action, after Liquid very kindly allowed their employee to work promoting a direct rival, for some reason.
If reports are to be believed and it is the SK Gaming team that will move over to IMT/MiBR, then they are of course only 80% made in Brazil, and that could have been 60% if s1mple and flamie had joined instead of Stewie2k. It seems that the commitment to the brand was already made though, and the marketing power of FalleN, coldzera and fer is undeniable anywhere in the world, let alone in their home land.
There were reports that the team would be joining prior to the ESL One event in Belo Horizonte, but it looks as though those were wide of the mark, with that set to be the last they play under the SK Gaming banner. The move has taken a long time to come to fruition, and with the tam’s form dropping off steadily since negotiations began, the fans and players will be hoping this is the end of the dark times and the start of a new era for Brazilian CSGO.
