Exclusive: Inside ESL’s Latest Town Hall Meeting

The Zoom meeting featured no Q&A session but assured employees "the worst is over"

Photo courtesy ESL Press Centre

On October 15^th this publication revealed that the ESLFACEEIT Group had another round of layoffs as the company continued to find a way to become profitable under its new Saudi funded ownership. Across 2025 the company have continually made cuts to the workforce to achieve a 2026 deadline for breaking even and it has seen many tenured workers unceremoniously dumped back into the world of esports unemployment at one of the worst possible times. However, according to the company-wide email issued there is at least some good news.

“Critically, this marks the end of this phase of change. With these foundations in place, we don’t anticipate any further changes of this scale. We’ve now established a truly sustainably foundation while not only preserving our core capabilities, but enabling us to better serve our partners and customers moving forward.”

Shortly after our report a town hall was scheduled via Zoom where these decisions would be explained and the future of the company outlined. Unlike their last town hall there was to be no Q&A session at the end.

As, in our experience at least, “town halls” tend to be a corporate exercise in convincing a workforce they are valued by having executives regurgitate jargon into their faces for an hour, we shall spare you a full transcript. Instead, we shall pick out key quotes and reveals that are in the public interest.

• The CEO, Niccolo Maisto, stated that the “new operating model breaks a lot of the silos and gives a flatter hierarchy” before adding that “we’re at the end of the first pillar, the cost-focused one.”

• Slides were also shared demonstrating the huge losses the company had been suffering even as these cuts were being made. One showed that even though they had reduced losses by 54% between 2023 and 2024 they were still far away from breaking even. Another slide showed their 2026 projection to “positive based on all actions taken including new commercial wins, improved operational efficiency and organizational realignment with potential for additional unbudgeted upside.”

• Maisto reassured everyone present that “the worst is behind us.”

• However, the company is set to still have further tumultuous changes as “approximately 300 employees within esports are changing departments this week.” Those changes include a restructuring of the marketing and commercial teams which are being split.

• Maisto also stated “we re-evaluated every IP and project that we have… and we had to take some difficult decisions, such as killing ESL Impact, ESL One Dota Asia this year and next.” The decision to cut ESL Impact came after a pledge to create “new initiatives designed to tackle discrimination, promote mental wellbeing and progress environmental sustainability in esports” via the GGForAll campaign.

• Added that “everything but DreamHack will be profitable in 2026” and stated “DreamHack will follow in 2027.”

• The CTO, Maurizio Attisani, also participated in the call to explain about future applications of AI (Artificial Intelligence) in the company. The use of AI is always controversial, especially when it comes to workers rights, but it doubtlessly has practical applications that can streamline workflow for large companies.

• He stated that “we want to transform the process of data into AI.” The meeting would later add that the legal team wanted AI to be used for what they described as “bread and butter” tasks such as talent contracts, NDAs and contractor agreements.

Niccolo Maisto at the New Global Sport Conference in Riyadh

Of greater significance seems to be the now heavy focus on catering to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in terms of how the business is structured. ESLFACEIT are already the production company for the Esports World Cup in Riyadh and now the Esports Nations Cup in 2026. It is known that many of the redundancies were told they would be rehired as contractors to work on these projects as a means to soften the blow of being laid off. However slides now showed that the structure of ESLFACEIT as a business placed “KSA” alongside Dota 2 and CS2 in terms of focus and development.

“KSA roles” included Product (EWC and ENC), Torunament Mgmt (sic), Marketing Team, Media Services, Editorial & Content, Talent Management, TV Production & Engineering, Project Mgmt (sic), Event Management and Design & Graphics. It is our understanding these are all departments that have full time roles within the company.

In addition to that they also stated they had a “Middle East Growth Engine” with a business department comprised of a Local KSA Dev, Business Dev, Strategic Initiatives and an SEF Program(s) department. Collectively this demonstrates just how central servicing Saudi Arabia’s Project 2030 has become to the company.

This was also underlined in another slide that showed the company’s “global footprint” for 2026 and beyond. It stated that Columbus, USA would be used for studio based products for North American publishers, Stockholm would used for “owned and operated” initiatives and supporting DreamHack, that Selangor, Malaysia, would be used for relevant products in a “cost effective way” and that Riyadh would be home for all Middle East based production. This same slide also confirmed that Poland would be the “key logistics hub for EWC, ENC and O&O businesses.”

On that note, during the layoffs reported last month, it seems that the entire department responsible for EMEA competitions, based in Poland, were laid off. The team, made up of contractors, was responsible for EWC qualifiers and the Snapdragon Pro Series but was also deemed surplus to requirements. In a Discord message from Michal Wisniewski, Director of Tournament Operations at ESLFACEIT Group, he said the following:

“Dear Freelancers,

We wanted to personally let you know that, due to recent organizational changes at EFG, our entire department has been laid off, and as a result the Community Hub will be closed for EFG projects. However, we want to keep our database (our active members) for the future projects, that are not related to the current company. We will share more details soon.

We would like to extend our deepest gratitude for all the years of collaboration, creativity and support. Working with you has been an incredible experience and we truly appreciate the time, effort and dedication you’ve shared with us and the wider community.

At this moment, we unfortunately don’t have any information about who will be taking over or managing any open matters. Our access to company resources has been fully cut off, so we’re unable to follow up or provide further details.

Thank you once again for being part of this journey with us – it’s been an honor to work alongside such talented and passionate people. We wish you all the very best in your future projects and endeavours.

With warm regards

TM EMEA Team”

It will remain to be seen whether the path to profitability yields the results that EFG are hoping for. The last assessment of publicly available financial records suggested their future was still contingent upon investment from the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PiF) and increasing the number of commercial partners for their non-Saudi esports projects. As always we will update you with more information as it becomes available.