#fnatic

Sometimes, I’d just like to avoid speaking about Fnatic because most of it is frustrating. And the teams’ performance is the least frustrating part of all. The organisation is filled lack of care and prioritizing short-term money.

On December 19th, Sky News releases this article.

After this article broke out, people being mostly surprised it was on Sky rather than common esports news outlets (if we can consider them so :S), made it seem pretty serious. Yet we haven’t had any update on it for almost five months until now.

On May 18th, Al Lío Podcast shares Fnatic has had meetings with 2 football teams (one of them German) to sell at least a big part of the company’s stocks (and that’s the reason the LoL roster hasn’t changed yet). The next day, they released a video rectifying saying teams weren't necessarily football ones and those he knew yesterday had already rejected the offer until know. Adding Fnatic wants to sell between 40% and 49% and keep its management. They then focus on the LoL roster which I don't care about right now because all of it sounds like excuses.

Let it be known Al Lío isn’t a news outlet, it’s an opinion-based League podcast where the audience is doomed to keep up with a particular agenda because investigative journalism doesn’t exist in esports as such for the most part (there’re very few cases yet this isn’t one of them). Teams reach to these sites on a friendliness basis instead of an integrity one and since there isn’t anywhere else to go, spectators have to tolerate hyperboles, lies and specific opinions for a speck of actual information. So they get the claps when they’re correct, and shift the blame on the audience when they’re wrong.

Esports have had a nepotism problem for the longest, be it one of the factors, apart from misogyny, no women play in the biggest leagues yet even if the sport is mixed.

The man speaking is Axineas, former Team Manager of Fnatic TQ (Fnatic’s LoL academy) and a known right-wing racist and hater of the team and its fans, whatever works to defend his good friend Dardo (former League Team Director and current Esports Program Lead @ Fnatic).

In continuing to support these media sites by feeding them information, the organisation shows their lack of care not only for their fans, but for the esports industry in general. The fact that this comes out now, from this person, vague-worded, with publicity on how they'd dwelve longer on it later, and after social media explodes they "correct" themselves, isn't innocent at all.

As much as I just ranted about this, it’s only a small portion of the club behaviours I dislike. Going from pretending to care about the fans to them make false promises or ghost them entirely to their most recent venture, Stashd, the CS2 cases gambling site (which staff tried to convince us for so long it wasn’t a gambling site until they couldn’t do so anymore and settled on saying they’d be taking action so that it isn’t only a CS2 cases gambling site). Many fans over the years have left or spoken about leaving. Many others have given ideas to strengthen the relationship but haven’t been listened to.

One of the latest false promises was that Fnatic is trying to move to ALGS-type merch, yet months later they release the most plain kit we've ever seen.

And I still have questions such as how will Fnatic deal with the fans who have stocks in the brand, even if they invested knowing they wouldn’t get anything out of it.

I’ve been a Fnatic fan since 2013, that’s more than half my life. However, I find myself hoping they sell most of it because there doesn’t seem to be an internal management restructuring path anytime soon and we’re nearing a cliff. If an external one is necessary, so be it. I just hope whoever joins, isn’t built with blood money and is willing to listen to those who spend money and time on these colours every day.