Remember the FTX fiasco? In case you are not familiar with it, FTX WAS a cryptocurrency exchange and crypto hedge fund which a couple of months ago went bankrupt. A surprise for many crypto users as Crypto magazines and crypto experts portrayed him as the possible successor of Warren Buffett and a promise for the future growth of cryptocurrencies, however, after the collapse of FTX things took a scary turn at least for his CEO Samuel Bankman-Fried who is currently in jail.
Did you know?: FTX Founder Samuel Bankman spotted playing League of Legends before filing for bankruptcy
Surprisingly, the platform was a sponsor for several sports teams and organizations, they even tried to close a sponsorship deal with Taylor Swift for $100 million dollars which of course didn’t work. Other partnerships included the Miami Heat’s basketball stadium which they renamed FTX Arena (don’t worry, they are searching for another partner to re-name it), the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team, the Major League Baseball Home Run Derby X and League of Legends.
Yesterday, the latest filed a motion in order to terminate the League of Legends Championship Series sponsorship deal with the cryptocurrency platform; a deal that was supposed to last for seven years, but obviously it didn’t last.
A way out
This deal was signed between Riot and FTX in August of this year, which was supposed to include the FTX branding displayed during all the LCS events for an undisclosed amount however was announced as the largest esports sponsorship the company had ever secured. Sadly… it didn’t work out.
Apparently, FTX was supposed to pay Riot $12.5 million in 2022 and this amount of money was supposed to increase over the seven-year deal, according to the document the company wants to get rid of the agreement as the association with FTX is damaging to its brand (besides the financial loses).
The document also mentions all the times Riot tried to confer with FTX after all the negative publicity surrounding the company and their attempts to request FTX’s voluntary consent to a mutual termination of the agreement, however, neither FTX nor its counsel ever responded.
Hopefully, Riot will get out of this problem and there will probably be a more thorough investigation before making deals with any sponsors, especially if they come from the cryptocurrency world.
In case you want to read the whole document, you can click here.
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