The 2022 ALGS Championship in Raleigh, North Carolina, was supposed to be a coronation for the giants of competitive Apex Legends. Instead, it gave birth to one of the most organic, deafening, and heartfelt fan movements esports has ever seen. An unsigned Australian trio called Team Burger—without a sponsoring org to fund their journey halfway around the world—arrived as underdogs and left as icons, thanks in no small part to a spontaneous army of supporters who came to be known as the Burger Brigade.
Eric Willis, a local solo-queue enthusiast who simply enjoys watching big ALGS events, never intended to become the face of a fanbase. He and a friend attended the Championship with no allegiance, spotted the humor in a team named after fast food, learned they were unsigned, and decided that was reason enough to cheer. Within hours, something extraordinary ignited. The PNC Arena began filling with burger-shaped placards, hand-drawn signs, and a noise so relentless it threatened to drown out the game audio. Other spectators gravitated toward the commotion, and by day two, Willis had a brigade. “Every time I turned around, there was another person,” he later recalled. “They just didn’t stop.”
The visual focal point was impossible to miss: a large hat and a distinctive mustache turned Willis into a one-man hype station, but he insists the energy came from everyone. ALGS caster Jon ‘Falloutt’ Kefaloukos amplified the frenzy by engaging directly with the crowd—at one point even eating a burger placard on-stream to show solidarity. That moment, broadcast to tens of thousands of viewers worldwide, cemented the Brigade’s legend. The fans weren’t just loud; they were a storyline.
What happened next still reads like a fairy tale. Willis printed burger PNGs on any available surface. Others arrived with stickers, posters, custom T‑shirts, and even pairs of Team Burger socks that Falloutt raffled on Twitter. A graphic design student among the fans crafted a full jersey design, and a local print shop owner worked overnight to produce the shirts—just in time for the team to wear them on the final day of competition. The players, thousands of miles from home and with no formal organization behind them, pulled on those jerseys and saw a sea of identical burgers staring back at them from the stands. It was, everyone agreed, the kind of magic no organised fan club could have replicated.
The symbiosis between the three Australians—Wxltzy, Dubz, and Jaro—and their new supporters deepened instantly. A Discord server sprang up, swelling to over 140 members before the weekend ended, and the players themselves joined the conversation. “We wouldn’t be here without you guys,” Wxltzy told the channel, a sentiment that underscored the raw, person-to-person bond seldom seen in top-tier esports. The Brigade’s chants frequently won vocal battles against rivals like TSM, though NRG’s fan section finally edged them out on the last day, Willis admitted with a grin.
Even when discussions turned toward a possible organisational signing, the fans’ priority was unmistakable: keep the Burger in the name. They flooded social media with endorsements, badgered esports orgs to recognise their team, and made it known that any deal would need to honor the identity forged in Raleigh. For Willis, who describes himself as an introvert powered by passion, the weekend reshaped his relationship with the Apex community. A caster named Ben ‘Zephyr’ Fossitt told him privately how special the Brigade was, and Willis nearly teared up. He had never seen himself as the kind of person to command a crowd, yet here he was, jumping, shouting, and linking arms with strangers who had become friends over a shared love of three gamers and a fast‑food pun.
Looking back from 2026, the ALGS Championship of 2022 remains a touchstone. It was the event where the best of the Apex community spilled onto the LAN floor—where COVID protocols forced some teams to play as duos or with emergency substitutes, yet the fans’ spirit never wavered. Team Burger finished 17th out of 40, but their journey dominated highlight reels and conversation for months. The Burger Brigade proved that fandom doesn’t need a cheque from a corporate backer. It needs a spark, a few cardboard signs, and someone willing to scream until their head feels like it might explode. Eric Willis gave that spark, and three years on, the echo of those burgers still bounces around the Apex Legends scene.