BLEED's CS2 roster departs club due to salary and prize money debts

The entire team of Aleksandar "kassad" Trifunović has departed the Singaporean esports club BLEED due to the fact that the organization's management has not paid the players' salaries and prize money for a long time. In particular, the esports athletes had to pay for the organization of the recent bootcamp out of their own pockets.

The team's coach reported all of this via his X social media account. According to him, the club's management is ignoring the team's demands, while the BLEED CEO has completely cut off any communication.

The squad will continue to compete with the same lineup under the UNPAID tag. According to kassad, the members of BLEED's rosters in other disciplines, as well as the organization's employees, have encountered the same issues. Trifunović's full statement can be found below.

Due to the latest news and development inside the Bleed organisation, we have decided to take things publicly.

After months of attempting to resolve our internal issues privately, we feel compelled to share what has transpired and is still ongoing. BLEED’s upper management team has consistently ignored our concerns, leaving us no choice but to go public and cut all ties with them.

From the outset, we’ve grappled with delayed salary (up to four months at the time), buyout, bootcamp, and other payments. For reference, most of the players got their first salary in April even when they signed contracts in December.

Before CQ for RMR bootcamp was organised and paid 50% by Kassad and the other 50% by players. Other organisations have confirmed that they have failed to pay buyouts for several players (still not paid to this day), threatening them with legal actions and going public with the information if they don’t pay, and about 60% of tournament prize money is still outstanding. Several times during the last 4-5 months the team refused to play officials and practice (weeks at the time) until some of the payments were made.

Multiple players from other divisions (Dota2, Valorant, and R6) reached out to us with similar concerns, not to mention employees regularly giving notices about breaches of contract and delayed salaries.

Reputation got so damaged that players refused to even consider joining Bleed, knowing all these things, and relationships got broken to the point that all people were thinking about leaving ASAP.

These financial uncertainties have created significant stress, impacting our preparation, motivation, and performance. It’s crucial to highlight that even in 2024, supposed tier-1 esports organisations can struggle with basic obligations.

We’re utterly flabbergasted by the lack of communication from BLEED’s top management.

They’ve repeatedly lied about payments, made empty promises, and kept us hoping things will get better. Most of the time we’ve been completely ignored by management–radio silence on their end. We’re currently consulting with our legal team to determine our next steps and move things forward. We plan to search for a new organisation that can offer us stability and meet the essential requirements for effectively managing a team.

On top of everything, CEO has disappeared from the face of the earth, and nobody can find him.

We will participate in the next two tournaments (RES Regional Champions and Thunderpick World Championship 2024) under the name UNPAID.

Note that BLEED failed to qualify for the Perfect World Shanghai Major 2024 Europe RMR – the team won two out of five matches in the closed qualifier. After that, the club benched Nemanja "nexa" Isaković and loaned Tim "nawwk" Jonasson to fnatic.

 BLEED's former roster looks as follows:

 Cai "CYPHER" Watson
 Joakim "jkaem" Myrbostad
 Vladan "VLDN" Radević

 Aleksandar "kassad" Trifunović (coach)

 Nemanja "nexa" Isaković (benched)

Origin: x.com