Women's Apex scene has lots of passion, but little cash: part two
This is The Final Circle, a newsletter about sweaty lobbies, filthy casuals, and everything in between.
This is the second and final part of a two-part series looking at the women’s tournament scene in Apex. It’s based off a feature slated to run in Fanbyte before they laid off most of their staff and killed freelance work. Earlier this week, I published the first half. The highlights from that: revisiting Esdesu’s Hammerpoint LAN clutch, excerpts from an interview with TSM’s young gun Isabella “Avuh” Keller, and Annie "Aniemal” Lee detailing her successful move from Apex to Valorant.
After their big announcement in January, it’s tempting to look at TSM as the biggest force encouraging female excellence in comp Apex. But a major grassroots effort nurtured the women’s scene long before top-tier orgs got involved.
Judy “Juka” Kristensen, who runs the Twitch channel HisandHersLive with her husband Andrew, has been a tireless advocate for women in competitive Apex, and her tournament ecosystem put some of the best female players on the map.
It began with her own desire to play the game at a high level. “I’ve always just been very competitive and wanted an outlet to compete,” Juka explained in a Discord call. “Women want to compete. They're just not asked to be on teams.”
In the conversation, she stressed that she didn’t believe esports had to separate men and women in general. Instead, women’s events serve as a necessary training ground: “These guys have been playing in private server scrims for two and a half, three years now. And the women just don’t, they're behind with that…it's the game sense and the experience.”
The HisandHersLive tournament series began with the requirement to field one woman on each team. But they soon found that there was demand for all-women’s competition as well. “I said, ‘Okay, we'll give it a try. I don't know if I'll be able to find 60 women that want to compete. But let's give it a try.’ And it was so easy to find 60 women that wanted to compete. We had two full lobbies of 120 women competing every single week for about two or three months.”
While Juka acknowledged that there were some all-women organizations around the scene before the HisandHersLive tournaments, they were mostly tailored to beginners still developing their skills. Her events were for top-tier players: “The women that play in this are the best of the best…they’re Pred, they’re Masters…And I wish there was some type of league or something a little bit more official for them. But until there is, I'm happy to bridge the gap.”
Far from a money-making opportunity, these scrimmages and tournaments organized around women were a labor of love. In November 2021, Juka estimated that she and her husband had put over $100,000 from donations to the stream and their own money into their tournament series. “Zero of that from EA,” Juka added. Multiple times during the interview, Juka stressed that they’d love some funding from EA, and at the time, it frustrated them that EA was happy to financially support tournaments organized by more popular streamers while their own dogged efforts to make competitive Apex a more inclusive space flew under the radar.
Juka and Andrew were eventually able to attract a sponsor for their tournaments, Box Fighting Championship, or BFC, who set them up with $30,000. Juka was able to secure $6,000 of that for her women’s league. At the time, the future seemed secure. With their new partner, Juka and Andrew were able to provide the most prominent inclusive tournament series in the game, a crucial space where talented female players could develop their skills.
In February 2022, Juka and Andrew announced they were partnering with the same sponsor, BFC, for an additional $200,000 in prizes with “Pro Series” and “Women’s Series” events. More good news followed. At the beginning of April, they wrote on Twitter that they were in talks with EA about a sponsorship.
But the promise of massive funding and long-awaited recognition from EA didn’t translate to the women’s series. About a week later, HisandHersLive announced that the next $3,000 prize pool women’s event would be their last, writing that “an all-around lack of community support won’t allow us to volunteer any more of our time,” and that the “Pro Series” and “fun invitational events” would be their continued focus.
The reaction from competitors was immediate. “Can't believe we are being ripped out of the best scene in Apex. Literally my everything relies on women's comp right now and it's the place I can call home,” wrote a top player, the 21-year-old Jenni “Yuusakis” Niemi, about the end of the league.
Seeing it end was “heartbreaking,” confirmed Yuusakis, on a Discord call in May 2022. Other women’s-focused tournament series don’t offer enough cash to really make them worth playing for her and her teammates. “I really wish that we would have more official prize pooling for these teams and all these tournaments,” she said, something that would provide a reasonable financial reward for the huge amounts of time and energy she invests.
On May 19, Juka and Andrew announced that all their BFC-sponsored events would be “postponed until further notice,” after awarding a very small chunk of the $200,000 in total funding promised.
At the time, I reached out to BFC and Juka and Andrew about the sudden indefinite postponement of the $200,000 in prizing. In an email, Juka explained that they didn’t know why the funding had vanished, and that they were told just hours before an event to postpone it. They held the event anyway, with a prize pool funded by their community. BFC never replied to requests for a comment. Their website hasn’t been updated since then either. The man behind the BFC brand, Michael “The Fortnite Guy” Padilla, who was also the owner of the troubled and short-lived team Kungarna, moved on to shilling NFTs.
In our interview, Juka laid bare the main issue facing female-only Apex tournaments: they didn’t attract nearly as much viewership as their “pro nights,” where invited players came from various tier-one organizations in the Apex scene. “I’ll be honest with you,” she said. “Pro nights got double the views.” When even the biggest esports events are run at a loss, market forces continue to dictate funding opportunities in the independent Apex scene. Juka said that all sponsors care about is the amount of viewers, and women’s events have consistently lower viewership.
HisandHers are hardly alone in their passion to nurture the burgeoning women’s scene in Apex, but other organizers have hit familiar obstacles. A company called Exolved ran a similar tournament series, which also suspended operations. “Funding was abysmal,” wrote Collin, the organization’s owner, who preferred not to use his last name due to safety concerns, in a series of Twitter DMs outlining the company’s story. At first, Exolved had plenty of success. Though the prize pools were modest, “we managed to hold interest from every top name in women’s Apex you could think of. No problem at all filling events each and every time, actually we had the opposite problem. People wanted more lobbies from us. We bulked staff up for it, and tried our best to pitch every other day to sponsors for funding for these women.”
There was plenty of competition. Other hopeful tournament organizers, perhaps seeing the same demand, were putting on similar events. And Exolved’s biggest rival, the HisandHers tournament series, had secured major funding—at least that’s what it looked like at the time. As HisandHers stock rose in the community, Exolved’s prize pools dwindled, and sponsors became scarce. “Self-funding this would have been a nightmare,” Collin wrote, explaining the decision to stop offering events in April. He planned a return in the fall of 2022, “with more variety.” HisandHers have taken a similar route with their offerings.
Despite the dismal funding picture, new opportunities have come along. Risen Rose is offering a healthy $3,000 in prizing in an upcoming tournament series. Yuusakis, who was “heartbroken” when the HisandHers female tourneys fizzled, started her own circuit, the Celestial Cup. These events aren’t paying anyone’s rent, but they’ve allowed the scene to continue to grow and gain visibility while enticing top players. TSM’s Janey, who briefly retired from competitive events this year, made a return for the Celestial Cup.
NiceWigg’s recent watch parties of women’s tourneys are another great example of momentum once again developing in the scene, and how a little visibility can go a long way.
His recent watch party of the HER tournament finals pulled in an average of about 4,000 viewers over four hours. Wigg Nation was into it.
Reflecting on the differences between hosting women’s tournaments and men’s, Juka argued that women were in many ways better viewing than established pros.
“When we're hosting the women’s tournaments, it's incredibly hype. A lot of the men don't even stream during our tournaments, they're all very secretive about it…if I were to make a highlight video of the women's tournaments versus the highlight of the pro tournaments, I think the women's ones are so much more interesting to hear these women like celebrating and screaming and yelling at each other.”
Watching Celestial Cup gameplay a few months back, NiceWigg agreed there was a mismatch between the hype and the payout. “They deserve more than 340 dollars,” he said. “Come on, bro.”
Once again, this is the second part of a two-part feature. The first part is here. If you think this kind of coverage is important, show your support by subscribing. I’ve turned on a paid option for this newsletter so wealthy patrons can show the love, but all Final Circle posts are free and always will be.
The gender-neutral ALGS remains an option for talented players looking to make their mark. Apex has a long way to go in developing a sustainable esports ecosystem for women, but some already play at the top level of the game.
Look no further than Kornelia "Sabz" Zawistowska, another TSM recruit and part of the Janey-Sabz-Avuh dream team. She’s been competing with a mixed-gender ALGS squad, Phoenix Legacy, since 2020. They’re chilling in Pro League no problem. Despite a lackluster 26th place in Split 1, in February they kept their Pro League spot with an impressive second-place finish in the qualifier.
Still, progress in this area is far from inevitable. More than three years after Esdesu’s clutch in Krakow, there were no women competing at the ALGS Championship in Raleigh, and none in London. We’ve lost a top competitor as well. Evelyn “Evzy" La Torre, an Argentinian player who thrived in South America’s Pro League, announced her retirement from competitive Apex in April 2022. It was odd timing, since she had just taken third place in a major tournament, cementing her place as one of the best players in the region. It turned out that there was more to the story. In early May, Evzy claimed in a statement on Twitter that she had been bullied off her team. Her male teammates had pushed her out of the squad just as they were getting their biggest break, an invitation to the ALGS Championship.
Though retired, Evzy kept a prominent place on the official ALGS website for months, as one of only four players in South America selected as a “featured player”. (The page has since been taken down). A short blurb she wrote for the page outlined her professional goals. They were, in part, to show that esports is a welcoming place for competitors regardless of their gender: “If you truly dedicate, compromise and work to improve you can always find a place to grow among men and they will respect you as equals no matter the gender.”
In December, Evzy tweeted that she was looking to get back into competition—in Valorant this time.
It’s a lot easier to release a Wingman skin inspired by Ninjayla than to build a consistent proving ground for women in comp Apex parallel to existing Pro League infrastructure. That requires not only filling regular tournament lobbies with sixty women of roughly equal skill, but also scheduling consistent scrims. Elite teams that hone their fighting and rotations over weeks of practice in anticipation of playing for stacks of cash will continue to outplace any players doing it for pizza money, male or female.
A big investment from EA and extravagant publicity across official Apex channels may be difficult to pitch to corporate higher-ups, particularly in this chilly esports climate. It’s easy to sit behind the keyboard and compare Apex to Valorant, but it’s worth remembering that these are two very different games. They have different communities and audiences. The esports side of Valorant has been a centerpiece of that game since day one. And as businesses, Riot and Tencent are much, much bigger than Respawn and EA.
In lieu of a Game Changers-inspired female Pro League, EA may feel more comfortable in a support role, piggybacking on the offerings of existing organizations like Girls Gotta Game and seeing what sticks. While an incremental grassroots approach can lead to a churn of overly optimistic tournament organizers running out of cash long before they run out of passion, there’s reason for optimism. NiceWigg’s watch parties alone prove that audiences on Twitch who enjoy competitive lobbies don’t need them to be full of familiar dudes.
The challenges facing the scene can sometimes obscure the huge opportunities there as well. A thriving community of high-profile female pros can only bring more interest and talent to Apex in general. TSM’s move to pick up female players was a savvy bet on a more inclusive future for the esports side of the game writ large.
Even ALGS trailblazer Esdesu, who has been critical in the past about the existence of women’s esports as a concept, announced this week she’d formed a team to compete in women’s events, Flaw1ess. “Well…” she wrote, explaining the shift in her thinking, “Times are changing.”
Hope you’re enjoying this soft reboot of The Final Circle! In next week’s issue, I’ll be taking a look at Realm and their efforts to boost the EMEA scene and take a page out of FACEIT’s book, including an interview with Realm CEO Eric Faust.