VCT CN will be the first Valorant esports league to add a salary cap

The Chinese Valorant league, VCT CN, is going to set a salary cap for its esports players, according to the head of Valorant Esports in the region.

The 2024 Valoran esports season is set to start in February and the new season will introduce one more league to the competition, VCT CN. The Chinese Valorant League was announced earlier in 2023 and information about the competition has been slowly rolling out since.

In December, fans were introduced to the 10 partnered teams that will be staples in the league for years to come. An 11th team will be added, to match up with the other three leagues, through a modified Ascension tournament set to start in late December.

The league will be slightly different from the rest of the VCT leagues. The competition will only feature squads from China, every other VCT league features teams from multiple regions. Also, according to a recent interview with the Director of TJ Sports and Valorant Esports in the region, the league will have a salary cap.

VCT CN will be one of the few esports leagues with a salary cap

Eric Feng, the head of Valorant esports in the region, said in an interview with People’s E-Sports that VCT CN will add a salary cap to player pay, as well as a minimum salary requirement.

“It’s hard to say that every result will be completely satisfactory. But we hope that through our efforts, some of our very good players can find a good club to play for, and then we can jointly improve our entire league. level of competition,” he told the publication, according to a machine translation.

Details about the cap have not been revealed.

Salary caps are not new to esports in general. The Chinese League of Legends competition, the LPL, implemented a salary cap in 2020, and the Korean and European leagues announced they would be introducing similar restrictions for the 2024 season. In the LCK and LEC, the cap is known as Sporting Financial Regulations.

The thought behind the introduction of these new rules is to “allow the sustainable growth of teams, players, and the league by regulating each team’s salary expenditures to an appropriate level.”

This comes after years of teams paying players exorbitant salaries in a race to sign the best players, despite the damage it might do to their balance sheet.

Whether a salary cap will be implemented in other VCT leagues has yet to be seen. While some players fetch a high price in Valorant esports, the overall spending on talent has seemingly gone down as spending in general for esports teams has reduced.

Laws around salary caps are also different depending on the country each league is located in, further complicating their implementation worldwide for Valorant esports.