LCL Players Have Not Been Paid Since 2020

It’s 2022, esports has evolved and has literally become a business. League of Legends esports could be considered a real sport, filled with sponsorships, professional players who make a whole career out of the game and yet we still hear of stories that players are not being paid.

Recently, both Kirill "AHaHaCiK" Skvortsov and Lev "Nomanz" Yakshin, former LCL players, have spoken out about their lack of payment from events two years ago.

LCL Not Paying Out Prize Money

In early 2020, the LCL held their opening Spring Cup. The Unicorns of Love won the tournament, earning 50% of the complete prize pool. A total of ₽ 500,000 Russian Rubles were supposed to be given to UoL.

It seems that two-years later, in 2022 the players of the Unicorns of Love roster are still waiting for their payout from the tournament though. In a twitlonger, jungler AHaHaCiK wrote that “[he] had no intention of making this situation public, however at this point it is not longer possible to stay silent about this. [He] ha[s] now been waiting for over 2 years for LCL to pay prize money for the LCL open cup 2020”.

Former mid laner, Nomanz quote tweeted the message from his previous teammate, merely stating that he is in the same situation.

Has Riot Been Notified?

In the same twitlonger, AHaHaCiK did say that he has been in contact with Riot through management. There was a deadline for them to receive the funds, but none of the members have seen a penny of the payout yet.

The latest deadline was supposed to be by the end of December, but that due date wasn’t reached either, which prompted the jungler to send out this tweet explaining the situation.

A similar situation happened in 2016 when Albus Nox was not paid and their support player Likkrit spoke out before leaving the League of Legends scene altogether. 

With both Nomanz and AHaHaCiK having made quite a splash at the previous World Championships, this story will probably reach outside of Riot Russia and hopefully the players get the money they’re owed.