Craig Robinson is an experienced writer, who has been covering gaming and esports since as early as 2015. He's passionate about esports, with a specific affinity for League of Legends and a keen interest in TCGs like Riftbound. Craig has bylines across Escapist Magazine, Esports News UK, Gameshub, and many more. Outside of work, Craig enjoys hitting the gym, sampling fine Northern delicacies, and coding projects to keep his GitHub firing on all cylinders.
Olivia Richman is a seasoned esports journalist who has worked with Inven Global, Esports Illustrated, Esports.gg, and more. As an editor and writer at Esports Insider, she loves telling unique esports stories, especially within the FGC. When not working and gaming, Olivia loves collecting Kirby plush, eating sushi, and driving her cars at the track.
Back in June, T1 , the most decorated esports organization in League of Legends , revealed it had signed Nick “LS” De Cesare as its inaugural Riftbound signee. For those unaware, Riftbound is not an esport, but a TCG version of Riot Games’ League of Legends. It was a significant move, and perhaps one of the hallmarks of interest in the Riot card game becoming a serious contender.
Not long after that, MSI revealed that more Riftbound cards were coming in the following set, alongside announcing that T1’s World skins were getting both playable cards and serialized collectibles with the upcoming T1 bundles, with only 10,125 serialized cards being printed, representing the 2025 version of each player’s chosen World skint.
Riot recently announced that raffle openings will begin later in August, with buy links going out in October to commemorate the release of the rare collection cards and playable bundles.
Furthermore, Riftbound is undergoing an extremely soft “esportification,” with the likes of Gen.G and Cloud9 also running events as licensed event runners. That is on top of EDG already being in the scene, winning the Sydney Regional Qualifier alongside many other events in China, too.
It got me thinking: what do organizations see in the card game? I spoke to Joe Marsh , CEO of T1, to learn more about the organization’s views and goals for the game, both as a grassroots community and its competitive side.
ESI: What was the thinking behind signing LS as the spearhead for T1’s Riftbound? Was it his Magic: The Gathering background and understanding of card valuation and speculation, his profile as a personality, or something else entirely that factored into the decision?
Jo Marsh: LS has a genuine passion for TCGs and has already won some early Riftbound tournaments. TCGs have taken off in the West, and we want to help make Riftbound huge in South Korea too.
LS understands the value of trading card games, whether it’s Magic: The Gathering or Riftbound, and he has an authentic passion for the space combined with high-level competitive skill. That combination made him a natural fit for T1.
ESI: What does Riftbound offer esports organizations that other TCGs haven’t in the past?
Jo Marsh: At T1, we’re heavily invested in the Riot Games ecosystem, and knowing how they operate, the passion and scale they bring to everything, we naturally gravitated toward investing in a space they were going to execute at a very high level. Riftbound blends the lore and history of our marquee game, League of Legends, with the collectability and competitive nature of TCGs. That’s w…