Over $1M in debt, cancelled events, liquidation: How YaLLa Esports collapsed

The UAE-based tournament organizer is winding down operations, leaving behind a trail of unpaid debts to employees, teams and partners.

2025 was supposed to be the most ambitious year for YaLLa Esports.

Founded in 2016 as a competitive organization, YaLLa pivoted to operating as a media agency, which had become a key component of the business during the pandemic, at the start of 2023. In October that year, YaLLa announced a new Counter-Strike tournament series called Compass, with a first LAN event scheduled for June 2024 with $400,000 in prize money.

The MongolZ emerged victorious from that event after beating Ninjas in Pyjamas in the final in front of a small crowd at the Space 42 Arena in Abu Dhabi. From the outside, it felt like another chapter in the Middle East's growing influence in esports, best exemplified by the Esports World Cup, which that year boasted a record $62.5 million prize purse.

YaLLa increased its presence on the Counter-Strike circuit in 2025 by establishing a year-round tournament series culminating in two LAN events, offering a total of $1.5 million in prize money.

But only a few weeks into 2025, YaLLa's first tournament of the year, YaLLa Compass Winter, lost its ranked status after HLTV revealed that the company was not complying with Valve's new rules regarding invites and tournament stages.

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The biggest blow, however, came in April, when YaLLa moved Compass Qatar to an online setting "in response to unexpected scheduling constraints" as it clashed with the MRQs for the BLAST.tv Austin Major. Additionally, it also halved the prize pool to $300,000.

On August 6, YaLLa announced that it was pulling the plug on the circuit. "Dear Counter-Strike community, the YaLLa Compass journey has come to an end," the company wrote on X. "Thanks to each and every one of you who supported us."

Despite having an event planned for November in Dubai and three more in the pipeline for 2026 in the Middle East, YaLLa Esports is heading for liquidation. The company's website has been taken down, and its Instagram account set to private. Meanwhile, the amount owed to employees, freelancers, teams, suppliers and partners is well over $1 million, HLTV has learned.

This is the story of how one of the biggest tier-2 tournament organizers in the space came crashing down, as told by those who witnessed it on the inside.

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YaLLa's bankruptcy was communicated internally on July 18 in a virtual town hall meeting, according to three people who were on the call who spoke to HLTV, but the warning signs had long been evident.

The company had often faced cash flow issues, and sometimes staff members would not get paid for one or even two months at a time. Whenever that happened, it was not Klaus Kajetski, YaLLa's founder and CEO, but Teemu Koski, the company's Chief Growth Officer, who addressed the matter in internal meetings, held twice every week, and stood up for those who worked in the company.

"The justification was always the same," a former staff member, who requested anonymity, told HLTV. "'We're having liquidity problems and once the money from a sponsor comes through, we'll get you guys paid and that will be our priority.'"

When the May and June salaries went unpaid, staff members thought it was just another bump in the road. Like many times before, this small team of nearly ten people, including full-time employees based in Dubai, and freelancers, supported each other through a difficult period.

"Everyone was very professional and understanding," said another former staff member, who also spoke to HLTV on the condition of anonymity. "And, you know, we've got to do what we've got to do, and understand we are facing difficult times. And as a company — as family, let's say —, we work together and help each other out."

During a company-wide meeting on July 10, Kajetski told everyone that a payment from a partner, sufficient to cover at least the outstanding May salaries, had finally come through. But as days passed without any updates, everyone began to fear the worst.

Kajetski began the July 18 meeting by going over the history of YaLLa since its inception as a competitive organization, with teams in games like Counter-Strike, PUBG Mobile, VALORANT and Honor of Kings. He went on to discuss the hardships he had endured and the substantial investment he had made in the company.

It was a self-centered emotional account that struck those who had worked under him all this time — some of them for years — as tone-deaf.

"Everyone could relate to what he was going through," the second former staffer said. "But what I take issue with is that it was all about him and that, throughout his entire speech, there  was not a single acknowledgement of the team around him, who stuck by him and are owed money.

"There was no acknowledgment that we were owed anything. It was almost as if he was telling us, 'Sorry, guys. We're shutting down. Good luck.'"

The first ex-staff member added: "I think it was very much an ego trip on Klaus' part. Like, 'I will go down with this ship, I'm the captain and I'll sink with it. But the reality is that he was not the only one; it sank with everyone on board. Everyone got screwed."

Kajetski declined to answer questions and asked everyone to leave the call, stating that, as the founder of the company, he wished to be the last to exit. He announced that the company was filing for liquidation and that all future communications would be handled through legal channels.

"As mentioned, we've made the difficult decision to begin the process of bankruptcy and formally wind down the company," he wrote in an internal email sent out after the call. "Despite every effort, we've reached a point where continuing operations is no longer viable.

"From here, the process will be handled by legal counsel. This includes how salaries, contracts, and other obligations are reviewed. As we’re still early in the process, we don’t have all the answers yet, but we’ll share updates as soon as we’re able."

One of the former staff members who spoke to HLTV anonymously estimates that YaLLa owes its personnel around 594,000 dirham, or about $160,000.

YaLLa's staff attempted to schedule an online meeting with Kajetski for July 22 to receive updates on the bankruptcy process and figure out how they could submit their claims to the liquidator. Despite getting daily messages from his staff stressing the importance of the call, Kajetski did not show up. The staff members went ahead and had the meeting to discuss their options.

Kajetski finally broke a long silence on August 1, stating in an email that YaLLa's financial statements and documents were "undergoing a final review." He named the liquidator entity in charge of YaLLa's insolvency process, which, according to him, has "successfully guided many companies through similar processes."

But, to everyone's surprise, he insisted that claims be sent to a YaLLa Esports email address, rather than to the liquidator itself.

"It was the same email address we always sent our invoices to," the first former staff member said. "It's a joke."

For this freelancer, an esports veteran with a decade of experience, this was the push he needed to exit the space and take his career in a different direction.

"I'm truly grateful and blessed for everything in my career," he said. "But I think this was the last straw."

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The news of YaLLa Esports' bankruptcy has caught many by surprise, but for some of those who were part of the company when it was still a fledgling competitive organization, it's merely the culmination of years of financial mismanagement and lack of accountability.

Wadih Al Sayah joined YaLLa in November 2019 as a co-owner to oversee the company's esports division. He and Kajetski, his friend of many years, set about turning YaLLa into one of the biggest organizations in the Middle East.

Those were exciting times for YaLLa, which had reportedly raised six-figure USD in an investment round earlier that year.

"After I joined, we built YaLLa as the most professional esports organization in the region," Al Sayah recounted to HLTV. "Everyone looked at YaLLa as, like, 'These guys are so good. They have really good contracts. They respect players. They're always on time with payments.'"

The COVID-19 pandemic was a big hit for YaLLa and forced the company to find new revenue streams to stay afloat. Leveraging his agency background, Al Sayah spearheaded the development of a new business division focused on event management and talent representation, among other things. "We were bringing brands into the esports ecosystem," he noted.

YaLLa's agency department continued to flourish, to the point that the company had to hire someone to run it exclusively. In May 2021, Tina Ghotbi joined YaLLa as Business Unit Director; she was onboarded by Al Sayah, who again focused on the esports section.

At the end of 2022, Kajetski made the call to shut down the competitive division and pivot the company to a gaming and esports agency. The decision came as a shock to many, including Al Sayah, who had been offered a minority stake in YaLLa when he joined the company. He was among the "six or seven people" laid off at the beginning of 2023.

"This is where things started taking a really bad turn," Al Sayah said.

According to him, several employees were dissatisfied with the severance terms offered by YaLLa. He said that YaLLa attempted to offer him an end-of-service gratuity that was about a third of what he was entitled to, as if he had resigned rather than being let go, before the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC), of which YaLLa is a member, stepped in as a mediator and decided in his favor.

"Most people who left didn't get something," Al Sayah summed up.

After being frustrated in his attempts to negotiate his severance package "in good faith" for six months, Al Sayah started legal proceedings against YaLLa, with a local court ruling in his favour in February 2025. "I put all my trust in Dubai courts and the judicial system in the UAE to get my rights back," he said.

He doesn't want to reveal just how big his claim is, but he said it's "seven figures dirham" in severance fees, bonuses and equity. This places his claim at a minimum of $272,000.

Al Sayah said he has recovered from the bout of depression he experienced after being let go by YaLLa. In his home, he still has several jerseys from his time leading the organization, but while he loves them and what they represent, he can't bring himself to wear them.

Learning about YaLLa's bankruptcy, he said, is like being "stabbed in the heart."

"I was living and breathing YaLLa," he explained. "The whole journey of building the dream of an Arab organization that could play against and compete with international teams was everything to me.

"We used to pioneer in the region. We were leading the charge back in the day. And seeing where it is now… I don't know. It's insane."

When YaLLa closed down their competitive section, they parted ways with multiple esports teams, including the Honor of Kings roster, which had just played at the game's world championship, boasting a $10 million prize purse.

After coming through the Arabic qualifiers, YaLLa's team finished bottom of their group in the main tournament, without a victory from six games. But like every other team eliminated in the group stage, they pocketed $250,000.

YaLLa received the prize money from Tencent almost six months later, on June 21, 2023, the game's publisher confirmed to the team. But Kajetski kept finding excuses not to pay the squad, including local bank holidays and other projects in which the company was involved, according to team manager Sabrina "Sya" Starke.

Sya and Abdallah "Abdo" Matar, one of the team's players, recall a meeting with Kajetski around July to try to solve the matter. During that call, Kajetski said all payments could be handled right away, but there was a catch: YaLLa would deduct a portion from everyone's share, stating it was necessary to pay employees to do some extra work to process these payments. This was in addition to the 20 percent of the total prize that, according to Abdo, YaLLa was entitled to.

Abdessamad "Ray" Allouch, one of the players, and Sya were the only team members who agreed to those terms to get their money as quickly as possible. Kajetski promised to pay the rest by the end of September, but that deadline was missed.

Tensions began to escalate in October, when news broke that YaLLa was going to run a $450,000 Counter-Strike tournament series with LAN Finals in the UAE, with players taking to social media to expose the situation.

"Everyone was like, 'Why is he not sending us the money? Why is he ignoring us, when he is promoting a tournament with a bunch of money?" the manager recalled.

When YaLLa dropped the Honor of Kings squad, the majority of the roster signed with Stalwart Esports, another UAE-based organization. Tired of waiting to see their money, the players who had moved to Stalwart asked for the organization's help in this process, the company's CEO and founder, Zeyan Shafiq, confirmed in a post on X.

Contacted by HLTV, Shafiq stated that Stalwart utilized its local UAE contacts to reach out to YaLLa and "pressure" them into paying. The matter was quickly settled, and the players on Stalwart received their full share of the prize money.

According to Sya, head coach "tony" was the last one to receive prize money. Abdo, "Simjo", Khalid "KC" Chater, "Quiet" and "feng" remain unpaid to this day, and their messages to Kajetski have been ignored since January 2024. The amount they are owed is in the region of $50,000.

Abdo's share is approximately half of that sum. For someone from Egypt, he acknowledged, that can be life-changing.

"I could have bought a house or a car," Abdo told HLTV. "I feel bad, after the effort I put into YaLLa. I think I was a reason for them to win [the qualifier] and get the quarter-million.

"But after all that, all this effort, I've got nothing to show for it."

---

When HLTV began investigating this matter two weeks ago, many Counter-Strike teams expressed shock at learning of YaLLa's financial hardship. It meant that they most likely would not receive the prize money they were owed.

The MongolZ and Ninjas in Pyjamas, the two finalists of the 2024 event in Abu Dhabi, confirmed to HLTV that they had not received their share of the prize money. YaLLa had promised to pay half of The MongolZ's $200,000 prize in September and the other half before the end of this year. Ninjas in Pyjamas were supposed to receive their $56,000 share in October.

This unfortunate development puts a damper on what was otherwise a watershed moment for the Mongolian team as it solidified their status as a rising force in the scene. That was also the biggest prize the team had earned until that point. (Later that year, they won the Thunderpick World Championship, earning $500,000.)

Sources told HLTV that YaLLa invited The MongolZ to attend the Compass event in Qatar before it was moved online. The Mongolian team turned down the invite on account of the lack of updates about the 2024 prize money and the trophy from the event, which they never received.

Over the past weeks, several other teams have confirmed to HLTV that they are owed prize money. Two of the most notable cases are NAVI Junior, who earned $75,000 through winning YaLLa Compass Spring 2025 (with the NAVI organization owed the same amount through the club share system), and BetBoom, who are owed $65,000 ($55,000 in prize money and $10,000 as club share) from six YaLLa Compass tournaments — a stretch of time that goes as far back as December 2023.

Other teams still missing prize money include Complexity, ENCE, ECLOT, Partizan, Nexus, Nemiga, 500 and GTZ.

HLTV estimates that the total amount of unpaid prize money from eight YaLLa Compass tournaments could be as high as $700,000.

YaLLa's financial woes also affected another crucial segment of the esports ecosystem: freelance talent and staff.

HLTV knows that casters who worked YaLLa Compass' recent online tournaments are owed over $35,000. They were hired by Next Generation Esports (NGES), the production company in charge of those events, on behalf of YaLLa. NGES is also owed a substantial amount by YaLLa, sources told HLTV.

"I went through something similar with a company called Efrag in 2018, and I almost can’t believe this still happens today," Jamie "⁠EternalJay⁠" Martin, one of the casters who worked in YaLLa Compass' online tournaments, told HLTV. "YaLLa promised big things, but it’s clear they were unable or unwilling to execute their vision.

"I could understand running out of money, but what pisses me off the most is that, seemingly, they would willingly commission work that they could not procure. They owe casters for their last three events, suggesting that their financial issues have been ongoing since at least April/May. They made promise after promise, delay after delay, dragged us through the most opaque communication to the point that a few weeks ago, diplomacy failed.

"The money I will lose from YaLLa’s outstanding invoices represents a significant portion of my income, large enough that I will need to reconsider some of my personal finances and budgets. Say what you want about this being a dream job, but I don’t feel like I should be forced to go hungry for a video game.

"YaLLa could have represented the best of tier-2, with online tournaments to provide a stepping stone to a greater event, but they failed spectacularly. And I hope that they, and anyone like them, never return to Counter-Strike."

EternalJay added that freelacing for tier-2 tournaments has become so unstable that in 2025, "more than any other year," he has considered retiring.

The cancellation of YaLLa Compass Qatar came as a heavy blow to ANATY Productions, which is owed nearly $13,000. ANATY is a German company that had been commissioned by NGES to be part of the production crew for the event, only to be informed a week before the tournament was scheduled to start that it had been moved to an online setting. Additionally, ANATY had turned down other events because they clashed with the LAN in Qatar.

HLTV has also learned of a freelance tournament admin hired by YaLLa for the event in Qatar who has not been reimbursed for the $1,000 he spent on flights.

Sam "⁠Tech Girl⁠" Wright was hired by YaLLa in April ahead of the Qatar event to do content and sideline reporting, not just during the LAN event but the entire Compass circuit until the end of the year. She remembers feeling incredibly excited about the opportunity to help come up with new ways to "showcase competitive CS from a new voice."

"The idea was to do content around their always-on tournaments," she explained. "Because there's so much Counter-Strike going on, and a lot of these tier-2 events are clashing with tier-1 events.

"The idea was that all of this content would then come together in a big final at the end of the year, and people would be invested and excited.

"But it was very short-lived, unfortunately."

Payment stopped after her first month of work. Initially, YaLLa put the delay down to some staff changes and the confusion caused by the handover process. Tech Girl continued fulfilling her obligations, but alarm bells started ringing around mid-July after YaLLa kept ignoring her requests for updates.

On July 25, she finally had a call with Jovana Jovanovic, YaLLa's Chief Marketing Officer, who informed her that the company was winding down its operations and had started the liquidation process. Jovanovic did not provide details about YaLLa's legal representative or the liquidator handling the case.

Tech Girl said she is fortunate enough to be in a position where the $2,000 she is owed won't have a massive impact on her finances. But she feels it's her duty to speak out for her fellow talent members who are facing a very difficult situation because they were reliant on the money they were supposed to receive for their work.

"Some people I've spoken to turned down opportunities to work on these YaLLa jobs," Tech Girl said.

"It's the impact that it has on someone who is very likely going to spend the next few months, or has already spent the last few months, living in debt, trying to just go, 'It's okay. This money is coming.' And they're put in a far worse situation than if there had been an honest conversation.

"I know this is so common in esports and most people will just read this and carry on because it happens so often. I mean, I've been really lucky. This is the first time it has happened to me. I actually laughed because, like, 'Oh well, it was my time, you know?'"

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Reality caught up with YaLLa in April 2025.

The company had struck partnerships on the premise that it would host a tier-1 LAN event in Qatar with some of the best teams in the world. What it delivered instead was a tier-2 online competition without a single top-20 team that had a peak viewership of approximately 35,000 people, according to data firm Esports Charts.

Sources told HLTV that 1xBet and YaLLa agreed that $160,000 of the $250,000 sponsorship fee tied to the event would be paid back to the betting company. That debt has not yet been settled.

A representative for BetBoom, which held the rights to the Russian broadcast, confirmed to HLTV that YaLLa "did not deliver the same type of tournament that was promised."

A representative for another company that was partnered with YaLLa, which did not wish to be named, said the amount owed by YaLLa "stands at €200,000 (~$232,000), stemming from incomplete deliverables."

The BetBoom representative who spoke to HLTV expressed concern for the health of the ecosystem that a tournament organizer that has pledged to run tier-1 VRS events disappears overnight and leaves behind a long trail of unpaid debts.

"It's a pity that tournament organizers are facing these kinds of difficulties," the representative said. "It brings a lot of risk to the whole ecosystem, because teams are not getting paid, tournaments are not getting delivered and the organizers are going bankrupt.

"It's a risk for the industry to attract new sponsors because right now, it mostly relies on betting companies. And we don't want this to be the case. We want the ecosystem to work independently so everyone can benefit from it."

As the situation became more dire, YaLLa decided to hire a new commercial director, hoping to find new partners that could help the company emerge from the financial hole into which it had been plunged. He agreed to talk to HLTV about his turbulent stint with the company, though he did not wish to be named for this article. He began working with YaLLa on May 1, at a time when it was already struggling to stay afloat.

He explained that he had been sold the picture of a sustainable business that was "doing relatively well" with two main sponsors, one of which pumped $1.5 million to $2 million into the company a year. He agreed with YaLLa that he would be offered a relocation package worth a month's salary and booked an Airbnb in Dubai for six weeks.

From the outset, he faced significant pressure to find new sponsors. But he knew it was par for the course; that's why he had agreed on a commission-based compensation system with a big potential upside.

It was only when he started on the job that he understood the gravity of the company's financial situation, including the debt to 1xBet because of the cancelled LAN in Qatar.

As May turned to June, YaLLa missed its first salary payment to him, citing the lack of an Emirates ID, which is a requirement to set up a local bank account, as the reason.

"I figured all of that out," he said. "I finally got my bank account. It's now six, seven weeks after I started. Again, more excuses. 'Oh, it hasn't worked out because there's a holiday.' And this and that.

"Just eight weeks of constant excuses and back and forth. Just bullshit, really. And during this whole time, they're, like, 'How are the deals going? How are the conversations going?'"

To make matters worse, he learned that YaLLa's bank account had been frozen because a former employee had sued the company. (Questioned about this, Al Sayah told HLTV he doesn't know if it was his lawsuit that triggered this. Several other sources, within and outside YaLLa, said they had been told that YaLLa's bank account was frozen.)

He kept pressing YaLLa for updates about his salary as his Airbnb rental was coming to an end.

"I told them, 'I'm going to sign a long-term rental contract, I need some income," he said. "And they were, like, 'It's fine, just sign on. We're going to sort everything out next week. No problem.'

"So I did that, which was probably one of the biggest mistakes I've made. At some point, I should have realized this was not going anywhere. Alarm bells should have gone on, but they just kept, both of them [Kajetski and Koski], saying it was going to be fine."

He learned about YaLLa's bankruptcy like everyone else: in the company-wide meeting on July 18.

On his last day in Dubai, he got an overdue rent notice under his door. He had until the end of the day to settle all outstanding amounts, or he would be evicted from the apartment. He managed to terminate his long-term rental agreement three weeks into the contract, but had to pay a fee equivalent to four months' rent.

He spent a total of $25,000 during his time in Dubai and even had to borrow money for living expenses. Additionally, he is owed $34,000 in unpaid salary.

"This is all thanks to Teemu and Klaus and their complete mismanagement of the business," he said. "They lie to people, they make promises and don't follow up on them. It's just pathetic.

"It's genuinely a complete Mickey Mouse circus show of how to run a business. It's not serious. One thing I'm super frustrated by is that they hired me knowing all of this shit was going on. Why would anyone do that? Any normal person would never do that. Why would you put someone through that?

"If they knew they had no money, they should be, like, 'Well, we just won't hire any more people. It's just going to go under. We go down with the ship.'

"To add more people to a sinking ship is crazy."

Somehow, he's still able to find irony in all of this. He landed a sponsorship deal just under six figures for YaLLa Compass that fell through in the end when the bankruptcy was announced. "I'm so glad that the partner didn't actually send us the money because it could have been way worse," he said. "I did my job. I overperformed. And I didn't get paid for any of the work I did."

He added: "I think in their head, they were, like, 'We're going to get this really good sales person. We're going to get this really good guy and he's going to save everyone.' When in reality, so many things were going wrong."

This account of YaLLa's approach to business aligns with information other sources shared with HLTV. Whenever the company ran into cash-flow issues, YaLLa hoped a sponsor would come in and help plug the hole, sometimes with upfront payments for tournaments that would be held down the road.

At the start of this year, YaLLa's management instructed staff to start working on a pitch for the Counter-Strike Majors in 2027 and 2028.

YaLLa was so confident that it would land a Major that it even started talking to prospective sponsors about investment opportunities, a source said.

"We talked to Valve at the Shanghai Major to see, first of all, if they were receptive to a bid from us," the first former staff member recalled. "Our theory was that, 'Okay, the event in Qatar has to be incredible because Valve is looking at us.

"I think our pitch was quite good, but the ridiculous part was that we didn't put the same investment and love into the [Qatar event] project that we actually presented to the community.

"Why would Valve trust us when they got that pitch and maybe were, like, 'Okay, this might be a cool idea,' but then the Qatar event comes and it's a clusterfuck?"

HLTV knows that YaLLa wasn't picked to host any of the four Majors that will be held during that span.

Valve did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In the days before YaLLa's bankruptcy was internally announced, management maintained a facade of normalcy. Despite over two months of unpaid salaries and mounting debts, YaLLa attempted to run the closed qualifier for Contenders Season 2. When NGES demanded partial payment of the money owed to them, YaLLa had no choice but to cancel the tournament.

To this day, Kajetski insists that all creditors should submit their claims to an email address belonging to YaLLa. He has refused to provide documentation supporting his claim that YaLLa is in liquidation, and the company he says is in charge of the process doesn't even list bankruptcy as one of the services it provides.

"I'm almost confident he hasn't done that," the commercial director said. "I don't believe him for a second. The craziest part of this story is that he is claiming to do that, but I don't think he is."

That sentiment is shared by the other staff members who have talked to HLTV for this article. They still talk regularly in a WhatsApp group. The general feeling is that no one will get any money, especially the freelancers, who are normally unsecured creditors in an insolvency case.

"The advice we gave each other is to act like you're never going to get your money and you need to move on with your life," a staff member told HLTV. "But we will not let go."

As an employee registered in Dubai, the commercial director will be among the first to get any potential proceeds from the liquidation. In the coming days, he will return to Dubai to start the legal process. He is already looking for a new job in the industry.

" The odds are that I'm never going to see any of the money, to be honest," he said.

"I think other people who were working for YaLLa are probably in a less fortunate position because they might not have as much experience as me, and they might not be able to work in esports ever again."

Amid the chaos at YaLLa, Kajetski has been sharing social media posts about one of his passions: cryptocurrency. He is part of Solana's UAE Superteam, which supported last year's event in Abu Dhabi.

Meanwhile, several sources have said that Koski is likely to join NODWIN Gaming, the company that acquired StarLadder at the start of this year.

Neither Kajetski nor Koski have made any public statements regarding the collapse of YaLLa Compass or the company's liquidation process. For many of those affected by the company's financial mismanagement, speaking up is the only way to prevent others from falling victim to the same pitfalls in the future.

"Klaus will set up shop somewhere else in a month's time," one freelancer said on the condition of anonymity. "I think that's what they do. He'll just start again. And for me, that shouldn't happen."

"I just want to forget about this chapter and move on," the commercial director said. "I want to delete it from my CV and pretend I never worked here.

"I don't want people to feel sorry for me. I want these guys to be named and shamed for the fucked up shit they've done. They should never be able to work in esports."

Koski declined to comment when contacted by HLTV.

Kajetski provided the following comment on July 23: "We’re not able to comment on the situation at this time, but we remain committed to communicating responsibly and with respect to our partners, teams, and fans. A full update will follow when the timing is right." He has not responded to our last request for comment.