100 Thieves have laid off around 30 employees

Esports organization 100 Thieves (100T) has laid off a considerable portion of its workforce across multiple departments in order to cut costs.

The details:

• The second-most valuable esports organization in the world made internal changes to its current workforce on January 10. Across sales, marketing, content, and human resources, approximately 30 employees have been cut, sources told Jacob Wolf. The 100T LinkedIn page estimates roughly 200 employees work at the organization, meaning the loss of around 30 people is a sizeable portion of their overall workforce, ranging from 14 to 17%.
• Among the cuts are multiple senior-level staff members: director of people Amber Fonts, director of production operations Alex Salamunovich, director of facilities Rowena Dy, vice president of account management and integrated marketing Katy Chapel, director of talent Bailey Heidhues, director of post-production Frank Door, and head of partnerships Hillary Gilmore. Chief revenue officer Matty Lee announced he was also let go in a LinkedIn post, with company president and COO John Robinson confirming that a new CRO would be starting the following day in a Reddit comment regarding the lay-offs.
• In Robinson’s aforementioned Reddit post, he explained the reasoning behind the layoffs, stating, "We're in a challenging economic climate, and like all sports (and esports) organizations, sponsorships are a major part of our business." He added that the company’s energy drink and hardware brands, Juvee and Higround, are "healthy and growing," but the team’s partnerships are still the "biggest source of revenue" that covers the costs of esports and content.

What else is currently happening in esports?

• Esports as a whole is suffering from the global effects of inflation as well as the value of cryptocurrencies falling, something that helped drive revenue to teams such as TSM, which recently dropped the TSM FTX branding after FTX’s sudden collapse. We’re likely to see more esports organizations make significant cuts to staffing and teams to reduce operating costs as the year progresses.
• Due to the struggling economy, we’re also seeing the effects on the pro leagues themselves. Sources say that Activision is currently owed approximately $400 million by teams in its pro leagues, the Call of Duty League (CDL) and Overwatch League (OWL). COVID-19 led Activision to suspend payments of millions of dollars in an attempt to help organizations stay afloat. This has now led to a situation where teams have only put up a small portion of their total payments towards the leagues they’re involved in. The average amount owed by a CDL team is $22.5 million, with the original buy-in cost being $25 million, meaning Activision has only received around 10% of the money they expected.