The Ugly Money Behind Esports Nobody Wants To Talk About (ft Nohte)

Yeah, so I went for the fact that we're getting more and more reports coming out of organizations again failing to pay players.

So obviously we had Luis Mira at HLTV who did this whole big report about Passion UA owing multiple months of salary and buyouts to NRG.

And there's basically been a lot of money owed over the couple of months since before Passion UA essentially disbanded their roster.

And then after that, we've also had KRL who recently put out a tweet about 3D Max owing players a lot of money, like multiple millions potentially.

And I know that you know the former coach also just tweeted out that he is owed a lot of money.

It's not something that's just rumored anymore in that sense.

At least the coach is saying, confirming that he's owed money.

And I know of at least one other notable organization in let's say the top 50 that owes players a lot of money as well.

Dating back over a year at this point.

So the fact that this is happening in our scene still and you're having it take this long for these rumors to come out, these reports to come out, obviously Kassad's famous bleed situation.

So it's still happening, but to the degree that it's happening now is a little concerning to me.

Especially with the fact that some players and teams and organizations are pushing this so far down the road that they aren't willing to talk about it because they're hopeful they get paid at some point, right? So even with this Passion UA thing, I'm sure this was known for quite a while.

But when there's hope of being paid and there's, you know, the organization's telling you, you know, it's coming in a month, it's coming in two months, you're still going to cling on to that hope when it's multiple tens of thousands of dollars that you might be owed.

So the fact that we're seeing this so regularly occurring in the sense of there's multiple reports happening at the same time around it is a pretty net negative, I think.

Especially when you look at it in the context of the change in sticker money that's happened with the Cologne Major and the way that they've tried to revamp that.

I think you have orgs sometimes relying on sticker money to then make up the difference or potentially pay back some of what's owed.

And when that got removed, you know, you lose a lot of that ability to kind of make up the difference.

And overall, I think the way all of that's combined recently is a big negative.

The, I don't have anything.

Well, I'll say it's, it is really frustrating to see that so many orgs even decide to just exist.

I mean, I like the bleed situation, even what's going on with Passion UA, that they try to operate these orgs as if they're just loaded with funding or especially with Passion's example attached to a celebrity name.

And then they aren't actually following up on what they owe people.

It's just crazy to me that you could be associated with a Premier League player and then you're talked to in that fashion and that you're owed money in that way.

It's such despicable behavior, truly.

From, it was from Zinchenko, right? It was like the, yeah, that's just, I mean, that's just the things he was saying were just downright, I mean, they have no place.