Popular esports organization Team SoloMid (TSM) said today that it has terminated its $210 million, 10-year sponsorship agreement with FTX following the collapse of the exchange last week due to a liquidity crisis.
In June 2021, TSM, the most valuable esports team organization according to Forbes, agreed to a ten-year branding rights deal with FTX. The team tweeted on Friday that it was “consulting legal advice” to decide what to do next in light of FTX’s bankruptcy declaration.
The group tweeted in a statement today, “We are stopping our cooperation with FTX effective immediately after observing the unfolding situation and debating internally.” The team said that it will eliminate all FTX logos from uniforms, team branding, and social media, yet owing to recent updates to Twitter‘s authentication mechanism, it still appears as part of the team’s Twitter identity. Since signing the agreement, Team SoloMid has gone by the name TSM FTX.
TSM Ends Major Deal
Amid a frenzy of sponsorship agreements in 2021 and early 2022, including agreements with Major League Baseball, the NBA’s Miami Heat and Golden State Warriors, and F1 club Mercedes-AMG Petronas, the $210 million sponsorship was the most lucrative reported contract that FTX secured. The specifics of FTX’s other esports agreements, which included a seven-deal sponsorship of Riot Games’ League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) were not made public.
Agreements with the Brazilian squad Furia and the Comcast-supported tournament company Nerd Street Gamers are two examples of further FTX esports sponsorships.
The squad said that it will be OK without the support of the exchange despite the scale of the TSM agreement, which is also the world’s largest esports endorsement by a cryptocurrency company. Similarly, Mercedes-AMG Petronas terminated their FTX agreement on Friday and took the logo off of its F1 vehicle. The Miami Heat soon after announced that they will take the exchange’s logo off of its FTX Arena facility.
