Invictus Gaming launches WSIG, starting with VALORANT and targeting multi-title expansion

The Chinese professional esports landscape welcomed a new player this Sunday, March 15, with the announcement of the creation of WSIG (Worlds Sports Invictus Gaming) Electronic Sports Club. According to the statement published on Weibo, the organization is the result of a joint investment between World Sports Group (WSG) and Shanghai iG Sports Culture Development, the entity operating the (iG) organization. For now, the new entity is expected to mainly compete in VALORANT Tier 2, a title in which iG was already active in 2025 and whose operations will now be handled by WSIG. It will not absorb the League of Legends team.

iG, known in particular for its victory at the Worlds 2018 and for having featured major names such as Yu "JackeyLove" Wen-Bo, Song "Rookie" Eui-jin, and Kang "TheShy" Seung-lok, before declining in the early 2020s. The club made a real return to the spotlight in late 2024, following an internal restructuring and the arrival of HUYA, a Chinese streaming platform, and Young Sports, one of the largest agencies representing esports players in China, including some of the 2018 world champions.

Entering with a combined investment of nearly 80 million CNY (around $11.6 million), with half allocated to the League of Legends roster alone, the duo, through a company created for the occasion, acquired 80% of Invictus Gaming. In the press release for the start of WSIG, it is stated that HUYA’s leadership position “will comprehensively empower WSIG in terms of brand building, content dissemination, and commercial monetization.”

The new organization behind this entity appears to have a somewhat different project, as indicated in the statement, and does not intend to remain limited to VALORANT. Likely supported by WSG’s experience and more traditional sports-oriented vision, WSIG stated that “in the future, the club will actively expand into the digitalization of traditional sports, striving to become a comprehensive esports group that integrates sports-based esports projects with game-IP esports.” This is a rather unusual positioning, as such simulations are still rare within the current esports ecosystem, outside of EA Sports FC, formerly known as FIFA.

This new project therefore relies on two distinct strategic pillars. In the statement, WSG explains that it brings expertise from traditional sports, notably through its role as an investor in World Table Tennis (WTT). According to information uncovered by Sheep Esports across various Chinese media outlets, a Hong Kong company named World Sports Industry Holdings Limited, alongside the International Table Tennis Federation, acquired 15% of WTT in 2022, which seems to support this claim. Lei Zhenjian, former founding CEO of LeTV Sports, a platform that aimed to become the “Netflix of sports” in Asia before collapsing in 2018, has been identified by several investigations as the effective controller of the Hong Kong holding company and still publicly represents World Sports for WTT.

Lei Zhenjian was directly caught up in the collapse of the LeTV group. In 2017, a major shareholder of LeTV Sports filed a lawsuit with the Beijing People’s Court against Lei and several executives. The complaint alleged that they had granted a loan of around 4 billion yuan to parent company LeTV Holdings without proper approval in accordance with the company’s statutes and sought 100 million yuan in damages. The link with iG appeared a few years earlier, when LeTV Sports was still on the rise.

In 2015, the platform raised 8 billion yuan in a funding round led by Wanda Group, owned by Wang Jianlin, with participation from several investors, including Pusi Capital, the investment fund of Wang Sicong, founder of Invictus Gaming. In other words, both the father (Wang Jianlin) and the son (Wang Sicong) were among the backers of LeTV Sports at its peak, before the structure ultimately collapsed. "This is Pusi Capital's first investment in the sports industry,” stated Sicong at this time, before adding, “I believe it is an Internet sports company that can truly ignite the passion of young people."

In the Weibo post, the company, which says it was founded in Los Angeles and has offices in Beijing, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Hong Kong, and Singapore, also states that its “investments and operations” cover “table tennis, esports, cycling, pickleball, gymnastics, and basketball, as well as infrastructure management, content production, and celebrity management.” In the same statement, WSG adds that it “will provide WSIG with a mature professional sports system, including sports science, physical training, psychological support, and performance complex management.” For now, no further details regarding these contributions have been provided.