It all started with fun until things got serious. Flamengo Esports has set up a League of Legends MOBA super team and is currently rocking the LOL Brazilian Championship competitions with the men’s and women’s versions of Wild Rift.
iGaming Brazil spoke on this occasion with Laila Loss, director of the Flamengo team, and with Laura (Snow) Silva, the Mid Laner of “Patroas”, only 22 years old.
Being featured in virtually every competition they participate in, in addition to some amateur tournaments, they won the Champions Cup in 2021, the first official Wild Rift women’s championship. There were eight victories and only one defeat in the campaign.
Watch the exclusive interview for iGaming Brazil
iGaming Brazil – Why did Flamengo decide to create an esports team? When was it created and what accounts for its early success in the esports world?
Laila Loss – When the esports world started, Flamengo, as a notorious brand, saw the opportunity, in 2017, 2018, to enter this market, including being champions. The esports market is growing a lot and Flamengo, being a club of vision, understands well to enter this world to compete.
iGaming Brazil – To what extent the esports habit helps the club community to identify with them and get out of unhealthy habits, so to speak.
Laila Loss – People have a very wrong view that in electronic sports people, athletes are not healthy, but on the contrary, like every athlete, there is physical preparation, there is monitoring by a physiotherapist, nutritionist, there is monitoring by a psychologist. Just because the athlete is sitting in front of the computer or on the phone doesn’t mean she can’t have a healthy life. Quite the contrary, she needs to have a healthy life, to have the structure so she doesn’t get bad back, so she doesn’t have back pain, tendinitis, and we give all this support to the players.
iGaming Brazil – How and when did the Wild Rift women’s team come about, and how did the name “Patroas” come about? Did the men’s team come first or later?
Laila Loss – The Wild Rift women’s team started in 2019, coming with the mentality of showing that electronic sports are not exclusively male games, that there are very good players in the scenario and in fact we saw that it could give an opportunity for a women’s team to start playing. So we set up the Wildrift team and continued with them until 2022. The name Patroes came from the LOL of the Academy boys who are the Crias, those who are raised within Flamengo to become professional and the girls in Wildrift are very good, they are a team very united and has been winning practically all the championships they participate. So nothing better than showing that the Employers are in charge, being in the market like Flamengo.
iGaming Brazil – What are you trying to demonstrate by setting up a female LOL team in one of the most important clubs in the country? What values does the team convey?
Laila Loss – This is the mobile LOL team, not the LOL team. Here we saw an opportunity to show the market that the world of esports can be a female world and not just a male one. And LOl we do have the intention of setting up a female LOL team, but the project is still being structured, all this is being created to be able to launch in mid-2022 or 2023.
iGaming Brazil – What is the profile of the players you choose? What characteristics or conditions do you have to have to be part of the team?
Laila Loss – We’ve always looked for an athlete profile, for people to understand that it’s a job, that they’re there to defend a team. That’s why we look for people who have resilience, courage, who have a vision of always looking for improvement, healthy people, because it’s no use giving us all the support if the person doesn’t have the will to be healthy.
After speaking with Laila, iGaming spoke with Laura (Snow) Silva, Mid Laner of the Patroas team
iGaming Brazil – Before being “Patroa”, what did you do? At what age did you start playing video games?
Snow – I’ve always liked video games, but I couldn’t afford a console or a computer, so I played at my cousins’ house, but I actually just watched because nobody let me play because I was small, but I always liked it a lot. And I would turn around, I would play with old and precarious games, on my cell phone, I would reset everything and play again, and so on. So, when my mother went to college, she bought a simple computer, but one that could play a little game. I’ve always had that contact and I’ve always liked the games a lot.
Before being Patroa I worked in an Engineering company as an administrative assistant and at the time I played in Arena of Valor (@Arenaofvalor) which was the first Mobile I played, at 17 years old. even tired after work, I arrived and played. It was at Arena of Valor that I started in women’s competitive, I was called to a team and participated in some championships. It was still a very small salary, very precarious, I never earned anything financially, but I never stopped playing because I liked it a lot.
iGaming Brazil – How do you coordinate studies and work? Do your parents like what you do?
Snow – I wanted to be a streamer, so I bought the computer, until Maria (Laila) called me. At that time I would leave the office in the afternoon and at night, at home, I would open the stream. So I started to reconcile that way, but I was fired because of the pandemic and when I received confirmation that they were really going to form a LOL team I started to dedicate myself 100% to the games. Didn’t work and just did that. I decided not to go to college to dedicate myself to this dream 100%. My family supports me. My mother was worried about me and my future, but knowing that there was consistency in what I did, she always supported me in that.
iGaming Brazil – How do you feel in being part of a team like Flamengo?
Snow – I see being part of the Flamengo team as a very big responsibility, because of the fans. The crowd is something surreal, we have a great interaction with them, we always respond and the crowd always supports us. Everyone writes “Go Fla!” The weight of wearing the Flamengo shirt is very big (in a good way) and this creates a very big responsibility for me to bring joy to the fans. I never thought that everything would happen so quickly, with less than a year in an organization as big as Flamengo esports,
iGaming Brazil – What are your plans going forward? What championships in sight?
Snow – My plans are to improve more and more, to train a lot, not only to compete in women’s championships, but also to compete in mixed official championships, which is currently formed 100% by male players and I believe this is our main objective, not only women’s leagues because we know our potential, we have the capacity for that: to become the first women’s team competing in official championships and to have a good level. For 2022 the team will continue to be: Ingrid “PEPSI” (top), Natalha “Nagata” (hunter), Laura “Snow” (middle), Elora (shooter) and Lisa (support).
