For almost two decades, SK Telecom T1 has been at the forefront of esports as South Korea's winningest and most well-known organization.

Now, as T1 Esports, a joint venture between SK Telecom and American company Comcast Spectacor, they've turned their eyes toward a global scale, aiming to become the benchmark that every new esports organization strives to match.

T1 Esports will first focus on a title that's just a couple months old: Apex Legends. In the first month since its February launch, Apex Legends set an opening-month record in revenue for free-to-play games with an estimated $92 million from in-game spending across all platforms, according to SuperData.

"We are always looking for the next big game," said Joe Marsh, the chief business officer of Spectacor Gaming. "With battle-royale games in the forefront, we thought Apex made a lot of sense. It's a great mix between Fortnite, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and Call of Duty."

Three-time world champion League of Legends team SKT T1, which will rebrand simply to "T1" in the summer, is already under the T1 Esports umbrella. With names like SKT T1's Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok as the faces of the brand, T1 is coming out of the gates with a steadfast motivation to continue gathering top-tier results across every game it decides to play.

"We understand entering each game is a big endeavor," Marsh said. "In that way, we are thoughtful about where we want to compete. We always ask ourselves, 'Are we capable of being the best team in this game?' If the answer is yes, then we invest to make sure we have one of the top rosters."

The announcement of SKT and Comcast Spectacor's partnership and the launch of Apex Legends felt serendipitous. Both came seemingly out of nowhere, with Respawn Entertainment presenting the game only 15 minutes before it went live. Apex partnered with various streamers on Twitch to showcase the game, and overnight the game was a smash hit, with more than 50 million people downloading the game in its first month.

The team's first announced signing was Michael "Sonii" Sherman, who primarily streams and plays Fortnite, the other battle-royale title to explode in popularity the last year. Following that acquisition and a goal to build the first great team in Apex's fledgling competitive history, T1 picked up three young talents in Brendan "BcJ" Jensen, Kurtis "Kurt" Gallo and 16-year-old Haydin "ZerG" Gordon.

This is "pretty incredible considering how I grew up playing League of Legends and being a big fan of SKT T1," BcJ said.

Only a week after officially coming together, the trio picked up its first trophy, placing first in a UMG Legends Series event on March 23. The event was played in single-elimination bracket style, with teams earning one point per kill in a match and six point for a match win. T1 took down several competitors, including Team Liquid and WorldBest Gaming, to reach the final, where it beat Ghost Gaming for a $2,000 top prize.

This past Saturday, T1 Esports held T1xFACEIT Invitational in a joint promotion with streaming production company FACEIT. It was a $25,000 tournament featuring T1, Tempo Storm, Team SoloMid and a slew of popular streamers. including former esports pros such as Michael "Imaqtpie" Santana of League of Legends fame and former Overwatch League player Félix "xQc" Lengyel.

T1 are your #T1xFACEITInvitational CHAMPS! 🏆



Congratulations to @zerg, @T1BcJ, and @T1Kurt for placing FIRST overall, and to our streamers @juankorea_ and @sonii for finishing in the Top 10!



Huge thank you to @FACEIT, our sponsors, and to all of our participants! pic.twitter.com/VbW0Wks731 — T1 (@T1) March 31, 2019

The tournament, when it came down to it, was a platform for T1 Esports to make its mark in the world of Apex Legends. Over the four-hour event, the T1 trio put on a Harlem Globetrotters-like display in its public server games, running circles around the competition. When they were finally finished with the 12 games allotted to complete the event, they had racked up 294 kills with victory after victory.

"Practice every day," ZerG said when asked what separated the good Apex Legends players from the great ones. "Having a schedule and making sure you stick to it. Having a team helps improve all aspects of the game, especially comms."

Although a team built around NRG's teenage phenom Coby "Dizzy" Meadows and former Overwatch League pro Lucas "Mendokusaii" Håkansson came close to knocking off T1 with a spirited final push, it wasn't enough to keep T1 Esports out of the winner's circle and away from the $10,000 top prize.

BcJ echoed ZerG's thoughts on practice but noted that his team might have an edge because the players are specialists and know where they fit with each other.

"We all can't be Bangalore or in the front line," BcJ said. "It's important to have a balanced team."

And balanced was T1 in its repeated flawless execution inside the game.

The UMG tournament brought in more than 142,000 hours watched by the end with an average of almost 38,000 viewers on Twitch throughout the various first-person streams and official broadcasts. In all, it was a major success for T1 Esports and Apex as a whole.

And it was a big week for the partnership already, too. On March 25, Comcast Spectacor announced a 60,000 square-foot, $50 million arena for the Fusion to open in South Philadelphia come the 2021 Overwatch League season.

What began through the simple love of a single game, StarCraft: Brood War, in 2004 from esports pioneer Lim "BoxeR" Yo-hwan has now turned into a global juggernaut. When ZerG was born, BoxeR, the founder of SKT T1, was wowing crowds in his home country of South Korea, becoming an icon that would convince thousands to see video games as more than just a simple hobby.

Today, those thousands are becoming millions, and with the help of Apex Legends, T1 Esports are trying to continue what BoxeR started with the next generation of competitive gamer.