The Worst Esports Manager Or Executive Of 2024

Who will be this year's Warren Buffet of Esports?

Previous Winners

🥇 2010: John “jHG” Blackwood

🥇 2011: Marc “virp” Corban

🥇 2012: Dmitry Smilyanets

🥇 2013: Simon Boudreault

🥇 2014: Noh Dae Chu – AHQ Korea

🥇 2015: No Award

🥇 2016: No Award

🥇 2023: Nicole LaPointe Jameson

And The Winner Is…

🥇2024: Sam “SlayTheMinotaur” Cook

Esports is never going to beat the allegations that it’s where failures come to thrive. Historically a lot of our managers and executives – from grass roots to the very top of the scene – have come to esports not because they’re passionate about the product but because they see the one last place they can deceive others about being competent. Often they are cast out of other industries, ones with higher expectations, measured performance and background checks. When they arrive here they quickly realise that it is all too easy to exploit under-socialised young adults with the type of transparent lies that likely brought them to esports in the first place…

So, once again, we’re talking about a manager who essentially used their player’s efforts as a vanity project and personal piggy-bank for their proclivities, an esports tale as old as time. Better yet, it’s someone from UK esports, a scene that is an absolute shell of what it once was that only seems able to produce the type of bedroom organisations ran by chancers that the space outgrew ten years ago. Of course, you can’t be too hard on esports when that same description has applied to our government for the last twenty years.

Still, the scene that gave us the great Biggsy and Baggsy has given us another legend for the history books in the form of Sam “SlayTheMinotaur” Cook, founder of Into The Breach. The UK organisation had its time in the spotlight after its Counter-Strike team made it to the final eight of the Paris Major, after a flawed regional qualifier that effectively airlifted them into the top sixteen teams after beating the powerhouses of Sprout and B8. All joking aside the organisation had of course done nothing wrong, mere beneficiaries of a broken system that used enough of their talents and luck to get an outcome that while absurd on its face helped lay some foundations for growth.

The problem with that? Well, Cook by his own admission was unable to keep his hand out of the cookie jar and players past and present were suddenly starting to have to chase backpay and prize money. Always there were execuses… The esports classics such as a change of bank accounts or a freeze on processing payments. Money would turn up sometimes but so far removed from when it was earned that it never felt that things were heading in the right direction. Players and staff alike were always chasing what they were owed and for those that had won the highly coveted sticker money there’s still ongoing disputes today. More on that in a moment.

Into The Breach In Paris (photo courtesy of Into The Breach and Freddie Pritchard)

This would all come tumbling out into the public discourse after months and months of attempts to reconcile things privately, which at one point even involved this author. A story for another time perhaps. In the end the unsustainable game of robbing Peter to pay Paul came to an end with an announcement that Into The Breach would be ceasing operations. The resultant comments from Cook are a David Brent-esque goldmine of detached contrition, an unintentionally hilarious series of blunt apologia mixed with attempts to be philosophical and poetic at the wrong time.

“Unfortunately, I, the CEO, was acting as two people” he would write on X.com “one trying to match their efforts and another a destructive, alcoholic narcissist hellbent on self-immolation. I think everyone whose met me has likely seen one of these two sides, with the former able to convince everyone around me I was a sensible person, acting responsibly and not betraying their trust, while the later disappears in fiendish pursuit of dopamine and self-harm. The ultimate caricature which embodies the worst of people and this industry.”

You see, for all you esports managers there exists in you two wolves. One a competent go-getter determined to do the right thing by the staff you have a duty of care to. The other one has all the decency and self-control of Gollum with access to a VIP account to Ringhub. That’s just the way it goes in esports… When life’s losers get even a small taste of success and status they simply cannot go back to being the person they really are. The whole industry has been ruined essentially due to the vanity of people unable to accept that they’re awkward nerds or mediocre talents.

“ITB goes under, people lose employment, salaries will go unpaid, money lost, hate created – all my fault and responsibility” he would continue. “They’ll be several legal consequences of this, all of which I’ll accept and face. People will be made as whole as possible with what funds are available. This’ll be managed outside my influence.”

Just to give you an idea of the scale of the problem it’s fair to say that for players of Into The Breach the sticker money would be life-changing. By Cook’s own description in a now deleted post, he said it was “$241,071.61 per player” before adding they were contractually owed “$178,850.21.” You’ll notice the discrepancy in the two amounts and obviously while there’s salaries and operating costs to cover it’s hard to shake the feeling that someone’s getting fleeced somewhere. This is especially true when the manager is simply shrugging off the spending as something his alcoholic alter-ego did.

In addition to anything outstanding to the players Cook also by his own admissions in another deleted post took out £600k in directors loans that he blew the entirety of on “benders and self-harm action.” The crazy part is the organisation, which had recently expanded into Dota 2, had made a total of £4 million in 2024, which would have made it a relative success story even if achievements were sparse. Now it’s dead and there’s a nagging sense that Cook might never face any real consequences for what appears to be textbook embezzlement.

It is further proof, if any more were needed, that even in the rare cases where esports works out as is claimed it can, there will always be someone who is willing to break it for their own short-sighted selfish desires. Truly an industry populated by the bungled and botched, a circus and freakshow rolled into one where the attractions wear cheap suits and fake jewellery… A Narnia for the incompetent and this year Cook gets kicked back out of the wardrobe.