Ringo’s Rambles: I am a free agent – RT’s appreciated

Ollie Ring
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Disclaimer: With Editor Sam away on holiday, I have now been left in charge of the site and as a result have decided to launch a brand new feature – Ringo’s Rambles.

This will be a weekly column that will likely run until Sam returns and he decides to pull the plug on it due to it having little to no relevance and being a few hundred words of utter tripe written by yours truly.

The inaugural Ringo’s Rambles will be around the classic League of Legends free agency “RT’s appreciated” that seem to continue to pop-up each and every time. 

League of Legends is the most watched esport in the world. It has a huge player base and recently packed out a stadium in Beijing as SK Telecom T1 were dethroned by SSG. The North American side of the esport has just welcomed in the Golden State Warriors, the Houston Rockets and the Cleveland Cavaliers to the new franchised league system.

Esports elsewhere has seen the Dallas Cowboys come along and nab compLexity, and hundreds of sports clubs have come in to grab a proverbial slice of the ever growing esports pie. It’s serious business now.

So why do we have players who have competed at the World Championships – the top competition for any League of Legends player – tweeting they’re a free agent and asking for retweets?

I don’t know if it’s a meme or if these folk genuinely do it for a reason, but surely, just surely, the likes of the Houston Rockets aren’t browsing Twitter and hoping they notice a player is a free agent from my mate Jimmy’s retweet? One would assume enquiries are made far in advance as to a player’s availability, and those scouting players will have a list of targets should they become available.

Upon rigorous, timely investigation of this lovely chaps followers, the eight of them are a mixture of what one would assume friends and bot accounts. I’m not wholly sure what value Flame obtained from having his plea for a new team heard by these eight people – but hey, that seems to be the way we operate now.

Maybe I am simply overestimating how teams work in a $10,000,000 franchise league or am I just completely missing the point? This still seems fabulously amusing to me.

Now all I am waiting for is Faker to turn up in a Range Rover outside Longhzu’s office trying to force a deadline day move just like Peter Odemwingie famously did a few years back in the Premier League. That or I’d love to see Grant from Splyce sitting with his head out his motor proclaiming he’s a “wheeler dealer” as he makes a last minute signing. I’m not sure either of these will happen in the near future – but I still can’t quite understand this “RT’s appreciated” malarky. Perhaps it’s just me. 

Ollie Ring

Contributing Editor
Ollie swapped the abacus for Sonic on the SEGA Mega Drive at neighbor Frank's house at an early age and has never looked back. With thousands of hours in Dota 2 (and no ability to show for it), he still clings on to the hope that one day, he will replicate Natus Vincere at gamescom 14 years ago and lift the Aegis of Champions. Ollie has been at the intersection of video games, esports, and gambling for over ten years and has also worked in consultancy in the gambling industry. Ollie's work can be found on the likes of: BBC, Red Bull Gaming, Esports Insider, CasinoBeats, PC Gamer, Green Man Gaming as well as his own thought-leadership substack "Esprouts" looking at specific studies and stories where games meet gambling.
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