Photo Source: Esports Matrix
One LCS team getting banned is news and drama aplenty already, but just a few days ago, Riot announced that as a result of two different cases, a total of three teams would be prevented from joining the next season of LCS and would be forced to sell their LCS spots within 10 days. The teams in question are Renegades, Team Dragon Knights, and Team Impulse.
TDK and RNG
The first two teams TDK and Renegades were both involved in the first ruling that Riot released. The first part of the ruling involved Renegades and their involvement with Chris Badawi, someone who had been previously banned for one year by Riot. Badawi was the previous owner of Renegades and apparently the current owner Christopher “MonteCristo” Mykles had a deal with him to give Badawi a 50% stake in the organization after Badawi’s ban expired. According to Riot, such a deal went against Badawi’s ban and the punishment for this was Badawai being permanently banned and Mykles banned for one year from ever being associated with a team or organization in a Riot-sanctioned league.
The second misdemeanor Riot accused Renegades of was of mistreatment of their players and a lack of a safe working environment. Riot has mentioned they have testimony and evidence from the players themselves, but on several social media sites, Renegades players have expressed that this is not the case. Whether this is true or not, remains to be seen.
The final violation that Riot has accused Renegades of was their involvement with TDK. Teams in the LCS are supposed to stay independent to each other to prevent throwing games or other unfair advantages between teams. Riot’s previous rule change of no longer allowing organizations to field more than one LCS team is testimony to this also. However, according to Riot’s investigation, a recent trade between the two teams implicated that this was not the case. The punishment for the TDK management stated that owners Chris Shim and Sean Shim are banned from association with any team in a Riot-sanctioned league with a chance to rejoin the league on January 1, 2019.
The full article for the ruling on these two teams can be found here.
Team Impulse
The case with Team Impulse involves payment of their players. According to Riot, the organization had not provided contracts to their current players and previous players despite being told so before. Also, they have not paid their players the compensation that they owed them for traveling costs, salaries, and more. This fact seems to be supported by the Impulse players who have stated on social media that they have not received money owed to them.
The ruling by Riot stated that Team Impulse would not be allowed to rejoin the LCS the next season and would be given 10 days to sell their LCS team. It is not clear whether they would be allow to rejoin the LCS in the future if they bring their stanards up to par.
The full article about TiP’s ruling can be found here.