PGL CEO Silviu Stroie: "Almost every single Tier 1 and Tier 2 TO is way behind with payments"

Today HLTV's Luís "MIRAA" Mira released an excellent exposé into the collapse of UAE-based tournament YaLLa Esports, revealing that the troubled tournament organizer owed around $1m to various players, teams, contractors, and employees amidst the sudden collapse and bankruptcy of the company.

While the report focused on the failings of YaLLa their failure to pay various parties and the subsequent collapse into insolvency, it also serves as a microcosm of the often unstable world of esports where late and missing payments are often the norm and even seemingly stable companies can collapse in a heartbeat.

This feeling was reinforced and amplified by a comment made by PGL CEO Silviu Stroie in an X reply to MIRAA today, with Stroie alleging that "almost every" tournament organizer in the space is "way behind" in paying the bills. His full comment reads:

This is not a singular event. Almost every single Tier 1 and Tier 2 TO is way behind with payments to teams/talent/vendors. Most of these companies are pushing the limits on what and when can be paid, even one year after an event would have been completed. This will happen again.

Stroie's comments paint a fairly dismal picture for the Counter-Strike scene, with the Romanian esports veteran betting on another YaLLa Esports-esque collapse in the future.

In a later reply, Complexity General Manager Graham "messioso" Pitt thanked PGL for being prompt on paying out prizepools for their events.

While Stroie's comments can be viewed from the lens of a TO casting shade on his competitors and should be taken with a grain of salt, he has previously been outspoken on other issues in the space including payment issues and sportswashing.