BLAST cease partnership with NEOM following massive backlash BLASTDanish tournament organizers BLAST have reportedly ended their partnership with the Saudi Arabian futuristic city called NEOM after facing major criticism from the esports community as well as internal partners. On August 12, as first reported by HLTV, it appears that the BLAST have terminated their partnership with NEOM on \u201cmutual agreement.\u201d The tournament organizers had been receiving backlash after announcing the partnership on July 28, one that many in the world of esports deemed to be controversial. NEOM is a fully man-made mega-city project backed by Saudi Arabia, who have invested more than $500 billion in development with the aim of attracting a million new residents. Read More: Dota 2 pro goes missing after being arrested – However, due to its affiliation with the middle eastern country, the organization has come under heavy scrutiny from a human rights standpoint since it\u2019s announcement in January 2019, something which inevitably spilled over to BLAST once they\u2019d brokered their deal. Today we announce a global partnership with @NEOM, an ambitious project that includes building a major esports ecosystem in the heart of what will be the new future of living! We talk about the future of esports, so let’s get to it. #BLASTPremier #DiscoverNEOM pic.twitter.com\/rjJdMxer9w \u2014 BLAST Premier \ud83d\udca5 (@BLASTPremier) July 28, 2020 This comes after many prominent members of the CS:GO community, including the likes of Duncan \u2018Thorin\u2019 Shields, Jason \u2018Moses\u2019 O\u2019Toole, Frankie Ward, Harry \u2018JustHarry\u2019 Russell, and Hugo Byron hit out at BLAST, calling the deal a \u201cdisgrace.\u201d \u201cThe BLAST x NEOM deal is an opportunity to educate ourselves so that we no longer work with people who would kill our friends,\u201d Frankie tweeted. She included a link to a \u201cmap of countries that criminalize LGBT people.\u201d Read More: Luminosity sign paralyzed Warzone streamer – Similarly, Moses, formerly a top CS:GO commentator who recently joined Team Liquid as a coach, strongly criticized the partnership and expressed his disappointments in a long email that was published by DBLTAP. The BLAST x NEOM deal is an opportunity to educate ourselves so that we no longer work with people who would kill our friends.https:\/\/t.co\/OY5lnFtcVK \u2014 Frankie Ward (@FrankieWard) August 5, 2020 Astralis, the CS:GO juggernaut that\u2019s one of BLAST\u2019s partner teams, also expressed their reservations about the partnership, as CEO Anders H\u00f8rsholt called it \u201cunacceptable\u201d and threatened to withdraw his team from any future tournaments hosted by the organization. While Astralis were the only partner to publicly denounce the deal, HLTV reports that \u201cmost began to voice their concerns in private,\u201d with Complexity CEO, Jason Lake, even going as far as to reveal that none of the partners had been made aware of the decision prior to making it public. BLAST are now the second major force in esports to partner up with NEOM and subsequently end things shortly thereafter. Riot Games, who faced major criticism after brokering a deal between the LEC and the smart-city developers, terminated the agreement less than 24 hours after the announcement. Just as with BLAST, Riot were scrutinized by many of the League of Legends esports on-air broadcast talent before Director of Esports, Alberto Guerrero, conceded that they\u2019d made \u201cmistakes\u201d and \u201cquickly worked to correct them.\u201d At the time of writing Danish tournament organizers have not yet made any such public statements regarding the status of their partnership with NEOM.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BLAST cease partnership with NEOM following massive backlash BLASTDanish tournament organizers BLAST have reportedly ended their partnership with the Saudi Arabian futuristic city called NEOM after facing major criticism from the esports community as well as internal partners. On August 12, as first reported by HLTV, it appears that the BLAST have terminated their partnership […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66352\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}