OPBAF: Team Liquid & Sponsors Tie Themselves In Knots

As June continues some esports organisations continue to flaunt their involvement with the Saudi Arabian state while aalso attempting to market LGBT causes. First up, Team Liquid.

As many of you readers will know by now I spent May contacting the organisations that are accepting the Esports World Cup stipend and their partners for clarity about how they reconciled support for LGBT causes and partnership with the Saudi Arabian state. The plan remains to publish the responses per organisation so you can have a fuller picture of just how widespread the hypocrisy is. I have to say after seeing so few esports organisations reference Pride Month at all this year I don’t know what’s worse… The appearance that they no longer can do so due to who they have chosen to go into business with or the hypocrisy on the few occasions they stray from this new orthodoxy.

Today’s focus will be Team Liquid as they are very much the most vocal in terms of trying to explain why it’s not a betrayal of their “core values” to engage in esportswashing for the Saudi Arabian state. Naturally I had contacted all of their sponsors and didn’t receive one official comment in return. I do know that the sponsors received my requests as Team Liquid management reached out to ask if it was actually me who had contacted their partners asking questions about Saudi Arabia.

It’s no surprise that Team Liquid’s partners declined to comment. After all many of them are existing in the same Quantum realm as the esports organisation itself, trying to present themselves as being genuinely caring about women’s rights and LGBT causes while also wanting all that sweet money from the Middle East. Dell, who own Alienware, have a page on their corporate website that says how much they value “developing women” across its global operations while expanding their operations in Riyadh. Former Dell executives jump at the chance to run PIF funded companies. Honda too pay lip service to Pride Month as part of their Team Honda cares initiative while obviously doing business in Saudi through their strategic partner Abdullah Hashim Company Ltd. Monster Energy Drink have a “human rights policy” that begins “One of the core values of the Monster Beverage Corporation and its subsidiaries (collectively, “Monster Energy”) is the respect for human rights” and also states “This policy is guided by the international human rights principles set forth in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” As Monster don’t just sponsor Team Liquid but also ESL, owned entirely by the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, one can only assume they rarely watch the news.

This should all serve as a reminder that one thing remains true in all of this… These corporations and their mouthpieces only care about their “core values” in the regions where those values are not only profitable but mainstream. Once they have to make the hard choices principles should naturally lead to those core values will in almost every instance give way to compromise and sermons about the complexity of modern living.

Case in point see the Senior Vice President of Marketing and Content at Team Liquid Josie Brown. After seeing the public reaction she felt compelled to respond and did so with a dishonest framing of what was actually happening. “There are people who would like to see esports teams stop supporting the LGBT+ community” she wrote. “They say we're conflicted; that we can't compete in the EWC & still be an ally. But to stop doing either forces an illogical and impossible choice. We support #PrideMonth its who we are.”

Obviously no-one is saying you shouldn’t support the LGBT community. Quite the opposite is true. We are asking you to not performatively support the LGBT community and to not do business with governments that would persecute and execute its members. Furthermore Team Liquid are, by any reasonable definition, conflicted. As a business you seek to attract LGBT fans and benefit from the economic phenomenon we call in the UK the pink pound. Then, once you’ve pandered to the Western audience you go cap in hand to a regime that is one of only ten on the planet that punishes homosexuality with the death penalty. I’ll spell it out – this explicitly means you are absolutely not an “ally.”

On the final note I do wonder why it is an “impossible” choice to simply say no to doing business with the Saudi Arabian state. Maybe it’s undesirable, sure. I imagine it’s certainly unprofitable. One thing it absolutely isn’t and could never be argued to the contrary is impossible. People decline money based on principles all the time. It has only become impossible for esports executives on a technicality, that after running your own businesses at a loss for years, if not decades at this point, you have to accept every blood stained dollar that is dangled in front of you or shutter your business. Well, I hate to break it to you but that means we all see you for who you really are, which is money first and principles somewhere much further down the list. Performative support for causes such as women’s and LGBT rights do more harm than good, stifling progress, encouraging sneering from bigots and ultimately making people tune out when important matters need to be discussed. You would in fact do more for us all if you would shut the fuck up as hard as I know that is to understand.

The worst part in this specific case is that Ms. Brown used to work at Hulu where if you go and review her portfolio she was associated with programming that promoted racial equality, social justice causes and women’s rights… For instance here’s one video where she and her colleagues wanted to raise awareness about the disproportionate amount of statues celebrating male historical figures and their female counterparts.

I won’t even waste the energy on typing up the very clear and obvious reasons why that would be the case but let’s for a moment just focus on the campaign’s central premise. I do think it’s important to recognise women’s contribution to history but you know what I can think of a country that doesn’t lionize women, that doesn’t even see them as equals to men, that has a legal framework designed to permanently infantilise them. The number of statues isn’t a priority for them to worry about because they’re not even allowed to apply for a passport without permission from a male legal guardian. I wonder is Ms. Brown can guess which country I’m talking about. I’ll say it again, if you put geographical limitations on your core principles then they are not core principles at all.

I had asked Team Liquid for an on record statement and they informed me that they were working on a public clarification of their position. A few days ago co-CEO Victor Goossens posted a video attempting to justify their involvement in the Esports World Cup in what is fast becoming an annual humiliation ritual.As you’d expect it contains a number of understatements in a bid to try and create some sort of framework where it is somehow compatible to simultaneously pose as a conscientious organisation while also being one of the largest tools in obfuscating the human rights record of Saudi Arabia. And understand that Team Liquid are not pleading ignorance. No, they are very aware of this history even if their language chosen reeks of corporate cowardice. 

“We want to call out the human rights record of Saudi Arabia because we think it is important to speak about this” Goossens said. “There are four areas that we would like to highlight in this video. The lack of political freedom and more importantly the limitations to what you can or cannot say on topics pertaining to the country. There’s challenges with regards to migrant workers who deserve far more protections than they receive. And of course something similar can be said for the LGBTQ community as well. Then there are the challenges with regards to gender equality. The history on these topics is not a pretty one.”

Wake up honey, esports new values just dropped. (Source: Amnesty International)

The first and most damning question that should be asked of any organisation that doesn’t plead ignorance and demonstrates awareness of Saudi’s history has to be “what would they have to do in order for you not to do business with them?” Given that we know they have tortured confessions from and executed gay people who had no access to anything close to due process that isn’t a deal breaker. We know that them imprisoning women’s rights activists for decades at a time isn’t a deal breaker. We know that imprisoning people for exercising free speech about their government’s activities isn’t a deal breaker. We know that engaging in mass murder of Ethiopian migrants at their border isn’t a deal breaker. So, it begs the question what actually is? If you’re willing to turn a blind eye to all then is there anything you won’t turn a blind eye to.

Other absurdities include the claim towards the end of the video where Goossens claims that every human rights organisation they spoke to advised them not to boycott as that action could never be as effective as participating and having a conversation.

“In all of the conversations that we’ve had with human rights organisations” he said “we have discussed the concept of boycotting… And every single one of them said do not boycott. If you boycott you will lose your voice over time and if you are an organisation that is willing to speak up and talk about these topics publicly but also have a dialogue privately you need to be a part of these events and you need to be a part of the change that is happening in this country.”

Now I’m going to state plainly that this is almost certainly complete bullshit. It was only in 2021 when 180 human rights organisations specifically called for governments to boycott the Beijing Olympics in 2022 because of the Uyghur genocide in the Xinjiang province among other things. Did they do a 180 in the past three years? Amnesty International do indeed have a policy of not calling for boycotts but not because they don’t believe it to be effective. They state quite plainly they want to focus on presenting information so adult consumers can make informed decisions. They have never taken an anti-boycott stance to my knowledge.

This can’t have happened because boycotts don’t work and human rights organisations advise against them. #keepthatvoice

Team Liquid also invoked Out Leadership in their video. If you look at their country report on Saudi Arabia, where they rate environments as being safe for LGBT people, they give the kingdom 1 out of 10 on their scale. Indeed specifically on the point of “having conversations” their report states quite plainly “Out Leadership encourages you and your company to engage in safe and cautious discussion with local leaders around LGBT+ equality and to leverage your firm’s influence to support their work. But this is virtually impossible in Saudi Arabia, where even hinting at being LGBT+ can be met with harsh sanction.” Good luck with winning those hearts and minds I guess.

Even amid the grim reality you can find some inadvertent comedy. Team Liquid and many of their counterparts doing business with the Saudi Arabian state have said it’s essential for their business because partners and investors expect them to participate. Out Leadership’s report explicitly states under the section about “brand risk” that “Homosexuality is completely illegal and punishable by death under Sharia law. There is therefore a high risk that doing business in Saudi Arabia would harm the brand’s reputation.” It’s clear then that not only do they not really care about this they also are disregarding explicit input from the people they consult.

Source: Out Leadership Saudi Arabian Report

The final outrageous claim in the video is this. 

“Having spent time on location and meeting the people from Saudi Arabia from all kinds of different backgrounds we also feel that we have an obligation to ourselves and to those who were kind enough to spend time with us to call out the progress we see. When it comes to this progress, particularly pertaining to the topic of an esports for all, such as the participation of women and members of the LGBTQ community the country is heading into a forward direction.”

Now I have no doubt that Team Liquid executives, indeed all the grubby esports executives now hungrily gobbling from the trough the Saudi Arabian state have laid out for this esports mafia of the mediocre, are completely safe. You after all are helping the Saudi monarchy achieve their goals. Exceptions will of course be made for you, the Saudi citizens not so much. March 2022 saw the largest single mass execution carried out in a decade, the victims including gay men who were forced into confessions then killed for the charge of “holding deviant beliefs.” August the same year saw two women, Salma al-Shehab and Nourah bint Saeed al-Qahtani jailed for a combined total of 79 years for negative social media posts about the Saudi Arabian government. Fast forward one year later and Human Rights Watch published a report that documented the slaughter of hundreds of Ethiopian migrants at the Saudi border between March 2022 and June 2023. In 2023 the Global Slavery Index published a report that said there was an estimated 740,000 people living in modern slavery in the country. In May this year the woman’s rights activist Manahel al-Otaibi was convicted for 11 years for not wearing an abaya when she went shopping and calling for an end to the guardianship system. I can’t imagine how deeply unserious you would have to be as a person to argue all of this is progress you can get on board with.

That is perhaps the most shameful aspect of all of this. In putting out statements claiming progress, in effect being a group of useful idiots for the Saudi regime, you are explicitly stating that you do not stand with any of those people… Not the wrongfully imprisoned women, not the gay men hauled from their homes and then executed, not the migrants forced to work in appalling conditions and not those seeking asylum that were gunned down for sport. None of those lives matter to the organisations that put out apologia for the perpetrators of these heinous acts. But hey, at least you get to run an esports organisation that makes a bit of money so I can understand how these things balance out on the scales of priority.