Galatasaray Esports has been suspended for the entire 2020 TCL Winter Split over unpaid salaries, Riot Games announced in an official statement. The punishment comes at the end of a two-week-long investigation, initiated after members of the sports team spoke out publicly about being owed multiple salaries.
On December 1, GS’ mid laner Lee “GBM” Chang-seok called out Galatasaray over the issue, saying they keep ignoring him. “They promised me first week of October and kept saying next week, next week, and now it’s December. I’m surprised the pro league has a team like this in esports.”
In an interview with Inven Global, GBM also said that Choi “BalKhan” Hyun-jin is also owed his salaries since August, while sub mid laner Dan “GodBro” Van Vo and support Barış “Tolerant” Çepnioğlu are owed eight months of due payments.
Investigation into GBM’s claims have apparently yielded results and Riot will be cutting GS out of 2020 TCL Winter entirely, reducing the league to just nine teams. The club’s status for the TCL Summer Split will be re-evaluated if depending on how they comply with Riot’s expectations.
“In our post from December 11, 2019, we mentioned the steps we will take regarding the violation of Galatasaray Esports’ team contracts. As a result of our investigation, we found that Galatasaray Esports could not complete the delayed player and coach payments as of December 27, 2019.
In order to maintain the standards of the Vodafone FreeZone Championship, Galatasaray Esports’ participation in the league has been suspended for the 2020 Winter Season. […] With the suspension of Galatasaray, all player and coach contracts for the 2020 season can be unilaterally terminated.”
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