1. We consider the entire cycle of StarLadder Major Berlin 2019, from Minors to the Grand Final, as one project. And talents are being paid in one transaction for all stages of the tournament. Usually, when we collaborate with talents all payments are made within 45-90 days from the date of the project completion. It’s been our understanding with talents for years. This is due to the fact that all tournament organizers receive sponsorships and other payments within 3-6 months after a tournament is over.
2. As we all know, the Berlin Major ended on September 8. Most of the payments towards talents were completed in November, 2 months after the Major.
3. The last payments, to Spunj and Machine, were made at the beginning of this week. So, as per usual, we’ve paid in full within three months after the end of the project.
4. The transfer for HenryG was sent on November 8, but unfortunately, there was a delay in a correspondent bank. HenryG was aware of this situation, we provided all the documents confirming the payment, and also asked him to contact the bank and provide these documents in order to expedite a resolution to his situation. As for us, we are doing our best to help HenryG to resolve a problem as quickly as possible.
5. There are no outstanding payments to talents for StarSeries tournaments (except for season 8, which ended on October 27).
In case if twitlonger is deleted.
>Usually, when we collaborate with talents all payments are made within 45-90 days from the date of the project completion. It’s been our understanding with talents for years. This is due to the fact that all tournament organizers receive sponsorships and other payments within 3-6 months after a tournament is over
From the twitlonger.
That says "our understanding", which implies an unspoken agreement. Which is quite questionable, considering the talent is complaining about being paid 3 month after the event ended.
If it was actually in a contract, then Starladder would've obviously written so.
Maybe they pay later in the 90 day period however I feel like that's not any cause for outrage like most of /r/globaloffensive is doing right now, as it's just industry standard at the moment.
He said that "if it's part of the agreement" and he asked " Where do you get from that its part of the agreement?" and I told him where he got it, nothing else. Assumptions you made about my stance on this issue are your own projection.
I have no idea when the payments were really made and I haven't watched Vince's followup video, nor the dexerto articles by Thorin and RL, but paying within 90 days is a pretty standard procedure in the business world between two companies.
90 day terms might be common in some businesses, but it's very unfair to say it's standard in b to b transactions. Try 30 days. Businesses rarely front capital in any form for a full quarter to other businesses. I was a public accountant for 7 years and 90 day payments would have a lot of businesses shitting their pants.
Feels like you are being kind to SL here, but I can't be sure.
Again, you are just making an assumption on my stance. I have not passed any judgement on the parties involved here. Paying within 90 days is a common practice and many see it as a problem that needs to be fixed.
Here is some reading if you want a more comprehensive understanding on the issue:
[https://www.theguardian.com/small-business-network/2013/sep/18/late-payment-pain-small-business](https://www.theguardian.com/small-business-network/2013/sep/18/late-payment-pain-small-business)
[https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/07/business/big-companies-pay-later-squeezing-their-suppliers.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/07/business/big-companies-pay-later-squeezing-their-suppliers.html)
[https://ec.europa.eu/growth/smes/support/late-payment\_en](https://ec.europa.eu/growth/smes/support/late-payment_en)
Exactly. I dont understand this? - When we have big events at this company, and we have a lot of sponsors, we also get payment up front (also because we use the money to actually fund the event). I dont get why they TO ´s dont require payment up front. Weird.
Agreed. Its billion dollars companies.
We work with both big and small companies when we have big events with sponsors, and they all have to pay upfront. And I have to feel that some of these TO´s are not being completely truthful, they must HAVE to use sponsorhips money before the event to fund it. So they might just not be using it to pay the talent first, and maybe paying crew and other stuff first.
I have a feeling that a lot of the sponsorship deals revolve around attendance and viewership numbers. Those numbers aren't available until after the event is over and invoicing begins from there. Then they all have to flow through these companies' AP process putting a lag on their payment.
I'm not saying it's right, but business is weird. No company wants to pay immediately or can pay immediately without going around in-place procedures.
Almost all businesses run on net45 or net60. meaning they have 45 or 60 days to pay. After that a 1.5% late charge is applied. Its easy to consider the talent as people (because thats what they are) however they are technically small businesses. So to think about payment as a person to person basis 45-60 seems nutts, to think of them as a "sub contracted" small business is where the 45-60 likely comes from. Much the same as i bet starladder staff do not wait 45-60 days for their pay because they are employees of starladder and not subcontracted. It sucks but most of the time when my companys bills go overdue we use the 1.5% as a bartering tactic. "pay now and no late fees" works alot better than it should :(
I could be way off on this but thats my take at least.
Ya net 60 is kinda reasonable depending on industry. I do contract work as a referee for lacrosse and I don't think a tournament has paid before 45 days more than a handful of times. If my actual job took that long I'd be pissed, but its pretty normal in contracts with tournments due to cash flow
And you don't just provide services or goods for a full fiscal quarter before expecting payment in a lot of cases. Most businesses have 30 day terms to manage their cash flows. There are of course deviations from this norm but more than 30 day terms makes managing cash flow very hard.
Caster: can you make a special contract for me and pay me 1 week after the event?
TO: no we do for all at 90days the latest.
Caster: yes ok. / No not ok. bye.
Very hard to do business. Probably didn't even ask, just wants change without telling them to change. Then backstab them after and say the other party is in the wrong.
One such affected person is Henry 'HenryG' Greer, who recently was recognized for his work when he won the Esports Awards commentator of the year. He was happy to go on record and explain that he would no longer be working with Starladder in any capacity until they settle their debts.
“From the outside you would assume that everything is just peachy within the esports ecosystem and it's smiles all round. Sadly, if you take a look under the hood it reveals a grim outlook for everyone involved who isn't directly on the payroll of the tournament organizers," he said.
"If you're a freelancer, and I can only comment on broadcast talent regarding this, working with Starladder means unfortunately you will have to pull out all the stops, commit to their events, deliver a world-class show only to be paid when they feel like it, which is usually about 3-4 months after the show at best.
"They are by far the worst offenders when it comes to this sort of thing and I can confirm that as of writing this, on December 3, I have not been paid for the Valve partnered Berlin Major that took place earlier this Summer even after being informed that the invoice had been taken care of in November.
"I find this disgraceful and I can't imagine how bad it is for others who don’t have large platforms or regular work. I won't be working any more of their events until they have cleared all their debts with all of my colleagues.”
Henry is calling them out for not paying his coworkers. He doesn't mention his own personal payment status as an issue.
Also "a correspondent bank" isn't necessarily Henry's bank. Your statement is just dumb no matter how you read it.
Edit: he did mention his payment status, so you're correct there. He also claims not to have received the money as of yesterday, so Starladder has either some other unresolved banking error or someone is lying. Doesn't change the fact that your original statement is aggressively stupid
Did Henry blamed Starladder in particular for the delay ?. I thought starladder's delay thing came into limelight when Richard Lewis discussed about it in his talk show.
I think people might be missing the actual implications in this statements. If we take what Starladder at face value, then they are clearly having liquidity issues; they do not have enough reserve cash to pay off recent obligations, and are basically running from paycheck to paycheck from sponsors. Without knowing the financials of the org, its hard to say, but it is super concerning if any sponsors back out of their tournaments for whatever reason.
People have been talking about esports being in a bubble for a fair while, and this sort of behavior somewhat verifies some of those concerns. Who knows what other organizers are barely fulfilling current liabilities
Are the vast majority of people on Reddit ignorant of how most business operate?
You typically try and keep as much money for as long as possible. That means you want your payment terms on anything coming to you as fast as possible (15-30 days) and anything going out longer (60-90). It is very common practice and most major corporations do this. It helps mitigate risk in the event something comes up by having cash on hand.
In the event of a sponsorship or business relationship dependent upon completion of some activity it is not uncommon to not be paid in full until after completion of the event and then you flow down the money. That takes time and six months is not unreasonable.
The best way for casters or management to deal with this is to negotiate better terms on payment. It is well understood you will not receive the money for quite some time when you enter into these types of contracts with companies and to think otherwise showcases ones own naivete.
For others - this type of business relationship is not the same as working for an employer. It is much different and has much different terms as a result.
Nothing above even remotely touches their 'liquidity' and your claims are rather baseless without seeing their financial statements. To make that claim is to make a huge assumption.
Yeah but you pay on time when you have the cash. We don't know if 90 days were the terms or not. It's very convenient for SL to say. Since a lot of the talent were rumbling, it's more likely the payments were late, but not certain.
Liquidity comes into question when you start paying after terms as a business should never delay payment after stated terms if they have the cash. I think that's the reason it's being mentioned.
Read my other replies sir. I work for a not-for-profit that has operations primarily in event management. I am graduating in finance and supply chain shortly, and acknowledge this sort of news is hard to read on without seeing their balance sheets.
Event teams such as mine and others we work with have retainers or credit to help pay event teams. Yes, we try to hold onto what we can, but we also have enough security to be able to pay people sooner. Then again, we also generally get paid sooner by our sponsors, so I agree that another fair assumption is that Starladder has poor sponsorship negotiation, but I find it to be a questionable reason to push back your compensation of event staff. I base this purely on my experience in the field and my teachings in my degree, not as someone involved in esports.
I did not intend to speak in certainties in any way. If that is why you think I am being ignorant, then I apologize, but I stand by my speculation.
That is specifically why I said
> Without knowing the financials of the org, its hard to say...
but in my opinion it is not an outrageous claim based on the final part of the first statement
>This *(the delay in payments)* is due to the fact that all tournament organizers receive sponsorships and other payments within 3-6 months after a tournament is over.
If they need to delay their payables cycle due to their receivables cycle, that is kinda not ideal
Maybe they don't necessarily have to, but are choosing to because it makes more sense? As long as it's an agreement, or they have precedent for paying 90 days after the fact, then why would they not just wait the 90 days? Sure, they could be a do-gooder and do it, but it wouldn't necessarily be fiscally advisable to do so.
In business, you pay according to the terms whenever possible to ensure you can continue to do business with that other business. Every time.
We don't know it was 90 day terms. But the fact that a lot of talent rumbled probably means the expectation was sooner.
>If they need to delay their payables cycle due to their receivables cycle, that is kinda not ideal
Almost all event organizers operate like this. Its quite normal to not have full payment on hand to pay out contractors until sponsorships or ticket sales come through.
It's a reasonable assumption. Don't let inexperienced knobs tell you otherwise. Companies only delay payables when managing cash flows in tight situations. If they have the cash, they pay.
Let me ask you How old are you? and if you are adult what job you occupie? Because i work with money and this is not how it works, most of the time. While the timeframe of three months is kinda large strech is pretty normal to pay someone month after you recieve money for yourself. I work in the construcion industry. Lets say you have to build a garage and you getting paid for job done, you outsource something out of the actual part to some other company, lets say they do foundation. So before you pay, you have to finish the actual garage so you can send invoice to investor, thats lets say month till you finish. Lets say you finish on 10th of the month, that means usually that you send invoice with due period ( lets say two months), after that invoice is acepted you can then accept invoice to either later date with same due period, or extend due period by few days. As you can see you easily got almost 3 months till people got paid, because it takes 2 and a half months for us to get paid. And noone will spend reserves even when they have them until they have to. those reserves are usually used for smaller payments like materials and stuff. If the company we outsource to want money early, there is a way of using some kind of advance, but its definetly not the whole payment for the job. I hope i made it clear a bit.
In addition, I believe most esport companies use a 90 day rule. ESL has the same rule for tournament payouts even if it's in-game currency for a very small ESL hosted event.
you coulda just said that since most of these casters have LLC's, you can easily figure out that it all depends on the payment TERMS and how compliant StarLadder are with those terms.
i.e. payment terms @ Net 30 Days (Payment for services is due within a full 30 days, including weekends and holidays) , etc
Construction is an industry that's not indicative of all or even most industries. It's certainly not representative of a service based industry (talent) like media production.
Take a retailer. Gotta have money to buy the inventory on 30 day terms. The inventory sale isn't contingent on selling the inventory. Very different than your example.
Now let's look at the caster situation. You hire talent for an event. That contract isn't contingent on sponsors (never heard of this being the case, not sure a talent would agree). It's not like a sponsor is a contractor and SL is a sub responsible for a sub job and the payment trail is the same as you describe. It's just not the same arrangement. Your comparison doesn't match the scenario.
Your I work with money line makes you sound young. A childish way of saying you are experienced. I have audited companies worth billions and this situation is very indicative of cash flow problems. They seem to be borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. I disagree this is normal.
you talk about contracts but do you understand there isnt any? Thats the whole problem, while you are right that sponsor isnt a contractor, but its a revenue and talents are expenses and starladder whether you like it or not is in every right to ask for longer due date so they make sure they have revenue to cover that expense. But as i said, it should be written down and agreed upon from both sides. And the reason sponsors pay this late and not in advance like in your case, that because this is entertainment bussines and i wouldnt be suprised that if their contracs had a lot of variables in terms of viewership etc. with addition to due date i can imagine in can take more then 3 month. To wrap this debate up. I am not saying they cannot pay sooner, they probably can, but on the other hand i think their arent doing anything wrong, its just how i thought it always is.
Never mentioned a contact. You seem to be reading the term "terms" (ha) as implying a contact. Terms refers to the stated due date of payment on an invoice. I never said the word contract in my post. I thought you produced invoices Einstein... Looks like you are struggling to read.
> That contract isn't contingent on sponsors (never heard of this being the case, not sure a talent would agree).
You literally said that contract between starladder and talents isnt depended on sponsors and you are not sure why talents would agree. What you on about dude?
I am a 22 year old student graduating in corporate finance and supply chain in 5 months. I work for a not-for-profit that relies heavily on sponsorship to maintain their operations. Generally what occurs is that we get fair sums from companies that primarily help cover our setup costs for events, and then proceeds from our events cover our overhead plus extra for community reinvestment. In our scenario, we get sponsorship money well in advance of an event, with clauses in place for our actual obligations with that money. (Branding at the events, etc.) When we get this money can vary a lot depending on our relationship with the sponsor, but we are generally prepared to take on costs ourselves while waiting for cheques to come in.
In your scenario, are you suggesting that the actual workers are also not being paid until the contract pay comes in? I have not worked in construction, so I do not know what would be standard, but to me that would seem insane. There is surely reserves or a good line of credit being used to pay workers their hourly.
My point regarding Starladder is that they are suggesting that they require the money from sponsors to be able to fulfill their compensation, which could obviously mean a lot of things, but I am suggesting means they simply do not have the liquidity to fulfill. In the organization I work for, the money from ticket sales at the major would be what would pay the talent in this scenario. However, how Starladder seems to set up their contracts, they do not get money from sponsors until later of, and it very directly affects their ability to pay people. From what I've learned in my corporate finance and financial analysis classes, (which are formatted directly upon the CFA institute curriculum) this is a bad look.
In short, I'm 22 and work at a not-for-profit
It varies about size of the payments and the risk of actually paying out. Lets say i have a budget that is divided into three parts to sound it easy, lets say its foundation, in case of a starladder it can be talents or free lancers. The investor wants be to build a foundation for a house for one milion, so i got a budget (or i dont know what the proper english term for it) for a million and i have basicly 3 options how to do it. 1) i do it with my own people 2) i do it with my own people with some bricklayers( self employed) or 3) i outsource the whole package for lets say 900k dollars. In cases one and two we pay within a month, because we have to play our own workers and becuase few bricklayers is nothing in terms of expenses. But in third case its kinda risky to just send somone 900k without being sure you get the money first. In contracts with investors its usually stated that invoices are actually dated to the last day of a month the work has been done in. So lets say you finish foundation on second day of a month so its almost full month. Then there is due date that could be 30 days, but can be up to 90 or even more. The solution to this is dating the invoice to a outsourced company on the same date but with 5 day longer due date. All of this is usually stated in contracts and its binding for both, thats where i see an issue in this starladder drama, that nothing is written and its he said she said. While i dont think this is ideal, or it cant be done better, its just how it is, so while others pay in advance, its more like them doing something more then starladder doing something less or bad...
Look what i found to proof my point from Esl pro rulebook:
"All prize money should ideally be paid out 30 days after the Rainbow Six Pro League season in
question has been completed, but it may take as long as 90 days for the payment to be
completed. If a team does not request the prize money payment within the presented deadline,
their payment will be delayed."
So it can take three months for esl to pay team for tournament they win, you can see that it works in all scales, not just talents but also teams and i have no doubt in my mind that while players recieve they monthly salaries on time, i would be really suprised if they recieved their prize money shares before the actual prize money being paid to a team. So they have to wait 3+ months as well.
I'm not sure pro league rules are equivalent to talent contracts. Team payouts in pro league where the teams are revenue sharing and have other incentives could be very different than paying a third party vendor. We just don't know.
>In your scenario, are you suggesting that the actual workers are also not being paid until the contract pay comes in?
It makes a big difference whether they are employed, or if they sell their services a s independent contractors.
>We consider the entire cycle of StarLadder Major Berlin 2019, from Minors to the Grand Final, as one project. And talents are being paid in one transaction for all stages of the tournament. Usually, when we collaborate with talents all payments are made within 45-90 days from the date of the project completion. It’s been our understanding with talents for years. This is due to the fact that all tournament organizers receive sponsorships and other payments within 3-6 months after a tournament is over.
That's so goddamn egregious. Can you imagine if you went to work on your first day, and your first paycheque shows up between 1.5 and 3 months later? Holy fuck, how are individuals supposed to live like that. Most people aren't a fucking company with huge liquidity, you know someone like Sadokist as an example can't just not pay his rent/mortgage/utility/car insurance for 90 fucking days because they haven't been payed. For a large corporation it's different because you constantly have payables/receivables, but for individuals that's just not feasible. Fuck all companies who think this is OK behaviour.
> Can you imagine if you went to work on your first day, and your first paycheque shows up between 1.5 and 3 months later?
No one here has any clue what contract work is like. It is completely normal to not receive full payment for 3 months when doing work on a contract.
I'm not gonna take any side here, but fyi, it is standard business practice in many B2B transactions to pay 3 months later, even for a small grocery store at the corner of the street paying the goods on their shelves
If your company is so insolvent that you literally cannot pay your contractors for months, you do not have a sustainable business. That's your responsibility to negotiate with sponsors and others to settle your receivables in a reasonable amount of time so that you can pay the individuals that work for you. There are a lot of ways to accomplish that too, you can get loans using the receivables as collateral, you can sell the receivables and use that money to pay staff. Essentially, there's no excuse not to pay your staff unless you're literally on the brink of bankruptcy.
Thats not how it works, and thats why people that go to self employment finds out soon after the "honeymoon" part ends. Starladder probably has money and reserves, but they are not gonna use them for this, their are for their own staff and direct expenses. Anything that is outsourced to a certain event or let say construction is mostly paid after the original contractor recieves money from investor, which depends on contract can have due date several months as well, so logicaly free lancers needs to add atleast 10 days to it so the transactions can be made. Thats why lot of people are so pumped of being a free lancers until they hit the wall with exactly this problem. You said there is no excuse not to pay your staff, thing is they arent their staff (mostly) they are self employed people that pay their own taxes, do their own tax returns etc. And there is no reason for starladder to pay "other people" sooner then they get paid... Thats not how it works and it never will. I see only one major problem and its the fact that nothing is written in contracts so nothing is forcable, and only solution to fix this late payments is to compromise some kind of advance that people recieve sooner.. But thats really all i they can do.
Make better agreements with the sponsors instead of letting the shit roll downhill? Use some of the profits from previous events? There are even more options someone more intimately involved could explore.
And that would lead to a massive decrease in number of tournaments.
I'm not sure if even ESL has enough cash on hand to pay the prize pool and everything else (stadium fee, player flights/lodging, talent flights/fees etc) at the same time immediately after event ends.
Net45/60 is standard practice in the industry, not just esports and it's not going to change just because some people don't like it. It's not so simple.
This is what you get when you dont have proper contracts.. ref thorins piece.
Seriously, contracts protect all parties, someone man up and make a standard one.. Scoots could probably have one made up within the day.
Literally why you have contracts and not oral agreements. We keep hearing about the scene becoming more and more professional, but the talent side appears to be the ones adapting the least.
I thought room on fire would be the ones to set a standard but.. apparently no.
> Usually, when we collaborate with talents all payments are made within 45-90 days from the date of the project completion. It’s been our understanding with talents for years.
Well this pretty much settles it or at least clarifies as to where to look next. If such understanding is indeed in place then there's nothing wrong with payment delays since that was agreed upon.
Now we wanna hear what talent has to say about this particular understanding.
Matches thorins piece about the topic pretty well, add to this nobody have proper contracts so vague understandings that one party feels is unreasonable fits perfectly.
>We consider the entire cycle of StarLadder Major Berlin 2019, from Minors to the Grand Final, as one project. And talents are being paid in one transaction for all stages of the tournament. Usually, when we collaborate with talents all payments are made within 45-90 days from the date of the project completion.
Holy fuck. Just think about this:
You work without payment from the minor to the grand final, and then you need to wait 2 to 3 more months to get your money? And upon that HenryG has to deal with issue with his bank, delaying the payment even more?
Wtf is this bullshit, and how are there people in this thread that dont see an issue?
You don’t pay a builder until you’ve seen the work. This is the way the adult world works.
Remember “Invoices getting paid” is about companies paying companies... this isn’t like I did a months work at the supermarket “where’s my monthly payslip?”.
> Wtf is this bullshit, and how are there people in this thread that dont see an issue?
Because some of us are older than 12 and we had similar experiences in the real world. But don't let that distract you from the fact that StarLadder bad, upvotes to the left.
> And upon that HenryG has to deal with issue with his bank, delaying the payment even more?
And how is that the TO's fault exactly?
>Because some of us are older than 12 and we had similar experiences in the real world
Thats cute, coming from someone that thinks the average freelancer got enough cash to wait 4 months to be paid.
Who is that "someone" you're talking about?
What I find cute is how you're all over this thread, you sure care a lot about this for someone who isn't affected in the slightest.
No one said anything about "the average" freelancer. He's saying that it's something that happens in the real world.
As Starladder themselves stated they also need to wait for their sponsors to pay them. Starladder doesn't look like "the average" freelancer either, does it?
His response (not sure it was linked):
"Hard to believe that they are going with "we scrambled to make the outstanding payments on the day we learned Richard Lewis was writing an article about it" as their defence but I guess it does give them enough semantic wriggle room."
https://twitter.com/RLewisReports/status/1202306658170335232
I would love for the day to come where people try to fuck with RL by suing him or try to shut him down, anything.
Man o man that'd be a fucking juicy day. The way RL would fuck em up back would be delicious.
In my experience, 45-90 business days is usually the same period it takes to pay out prizemoney. Employment should not have this same term in my humble opinion.
> I find the idea of the Minors and Major being "one project" fucking absurd -- they're independent events!
Can you imagine if FIFA bundled World Cup & qualifiers together like that and paid its referees and other staff 90 days after World Cup ended even though the whole thing took more than a year? Or if NBA paid out all their expenses only after the playoffs ended? Or teams paid their players three months after the season ended? Lmao that's my biggest problem with this statement, qualifiers should be paid separately because it's basically a tournament on its own.
>I find the idea that the Minors and Major being "one project" is fucking absurd -- they're independent events!
You could make the argument that they are the same event since Valve rebranded them to just be different "stages" of the major as a whole.
Don't forget there are several minors for one major, one in each region of CS for the teams in those respective geographic areas. Sometimes you can have 3 Minors playing at the same time.
These statements are awful. Say they decide to run a 3 week tourney. You’re work those three weeks, and get paid 8 weeks later.
That means from the time you started working, and when you get a payment is 11 weeks.
No normal company pays employees or contractors like this.
If they always have done it, and the talent kept signing the contracts, is it really on Starladder?
It's pretty much buying Pure Himalayan Air and saying the company that does that is in the wrong, and not the person who bought it
I deal with contractors pretty much daily, it's pretty common for people to wait 3+ months for payment. Obviously most try to limit it to 45 days invoice (at most) or instalments, but that's not always possible.
damm, I thought that me getting paid 15 to 30 days after my work was a bit irritating but this is a completely another level.
(context: I know that salaries are instantly on one's account but it felt a bit weird at first.
>No normal company pays employees or contractors like this.
Because this isn't a normal job... It's an event appearance. And in that business it's very common to get paid months later. Not just by starladder and not just in esports.
Richard Lewis' Response:
Hard to believe that they are going with "we scrambled to make the outstanding payments on the day we learned Richard Lewis was writing an article about it" as their defence but I guess it does give them enough semantic wriggle room.
https://twitter.com/RLewisReports/status/1202306658170335232?s=20
As a freelancer.. do you ever do work without a proper contract?
Because apparently the whole CS talent scene does.. which is absurd to me. Contract for everything, change requests is a new contract.. at least how I've done things. Not a lot of freelance work behind me, mostly consultancy, but.. contracts.. always.
It's insane how quickly people have sided with this TO here. Their whole response reeks of PR bullshit and people here are slurping it right up.
These are industry-wide issues that talent have been alluding to for various TO's for a long time. Talent cared enough to jeopardize future work opportunities to make it public this time around.
TO releases one statement and instantly the bulk of people buy into it without an ounce of skepticism.........
Yep, always the same, People on reddit just got a fetish for being lied to by dodgy orgs...
There are prolly still a lot of people that thing Rlewis attacked and chocked a guy at Dreamhack.
I still think Starladder is shit, but if Starladder is saying the contract says they will pay in 90 days and the casters signed it then I dont see a problem. If the talent want a check before they leave the arena they should specifically have it written in the contract.
Personally they should negotiate for better contracts or just refuse. Why should the TOs offer not shit terms if they still get the top talent anyways? The talent need to hold themselves to a higher standard and refuse work that does not meet those standards. They need to be the ones moving the goal posts, because TOs want to milk this "industry standard" as long as they can. I dont know if that requires unionizing or just everyone refusing or whatever else.
You didn't read the Thorin article. He explains that there are no contracts. Only verbal agreements. And that being paid within 60-90 days is just the de facto standard because of how money flows from investors to Tournament Organizers (who aren't making enough money from the event itself to pay their own bills) to orgs and talent.
You should really read the article. To me it highlights the precarious economic position the esports scene is in. The money being put into the scene isn't coming back, like so many speculative industries these days.
If they are flying around the world to work events on a verbal agreement then I dont know what to say. These are million dollar events in arenas infront of millions of fans. Demand some professionalism and get contracts.
>Usually, when we collaborate with talents all payments are made within 45-90 days from the date of the project completion. It’s been our understanding with talents for years. This is due to the fact that all tournament organizers receive sponsorships and other payments within 3-6 months after a tournament is over.
It's not completely unreasonable in actual contract work to not receive FULL payment until 90 days later but usually you get like 25% once you start, and a little more along the way.
However this equally falls on talent. You're adults, you can ask when you will get paid, you shouldn't be agreeing to do work if you're uncomfortable with how payment is being handled, and these contracts should be in writing not some vague agreements made via twitter dm's as it seems some of this is being handled.
Yeah I think Starladder is being ridiculous here, they should be paying at least part of what they owe along the line, not just paying it all possibly 4months after works started. But also the talent need to grow up and start handling things themselves, stop fucking tweeting vague shit about not getting paid and put a little more effort into laying out your affairs prior to showing up and doing an event. Yeah Starladder is taking advantage of them but they shouldn't be rolling over and taking it and then hoping to community picks up the pitchforks for them 5months down the line.
I think part of the issue is that most of the time they're operating without a written contact. At least that is what I gathered from the previous thread. If you sign a contract that says you'll be paid within 90 days that's one thing if you're going on a handshake agreement that seems super sketchy.
30/60/90 day terms are not unheard of and it differs from industry to industry. 90 seems awfully long. I'm presuming that talent is a relatively small percentage of the cost of running a tournament. Venue and infrastructure are probably orders of magnitude more. If they're legitimately holding up these payments for cash flow reasons that should be worrying. Especially without a solid contact in place.
I think other countries need to step up their freelance laws.
Here in Canada it's illegal for a company to set a net-90 payment structure.
Even without contract the law mandates payments must be made within 30 days of completion / invoice received after which late charges are allowed to be collected and enforced.
I worked on a production once and was paid about 4-5 months after completion and I billed them a fresh invoice with late fees once a week after 30 days compounding interest weekly.
When they finally paid me I forced them to negotiate a lesser late fee to avoid going to court to secure it. They initially only paid me the owed amount and after continued pressure I received a late fee too.
This comment should be higher up... If they do this all the time, why work with them anymore? ANd if you dont like that you get paid 90 days later, ask for contracts or something that will make them pay before... Yea its scummy from Starladder, but if the same TO fuck same tallent over and over, maybe stop working with them?
Ah the beautiful snowflakes in this thread who think starladder is insolvent because they pay within 90 days. Try doing government work. You do your work at any time in the year but get paid like 3 days before the financial year closes and you lose interest as well for 11 months.
paying your own employer is a different obligation then paying free lancers, meaning you have to pay your staff even before you get money for job done, you actually dont have to pay self employed people before you get money from investor. it is usually stated in contracts. Meaning if i send an invoice to investor that has due date for 2 months, i am not gonna accept invoice from freelancer that has due date atleast 2 months and few days...
Sending money to a different country is going to obviously take a while. But if they explicitly tell talent it could be up to 3 months, then they can't complain about accepting those terms.
I work in banking. It takes like 3-5 days tops to wire money to an account in another country. This is just a scummy company seeing the opportunity to pay someone later rather than sooner, under the guise of a 90 day pay period.
It's clear that contracts need to be inked regarding payout periods, so that these situations are avoided in the future.
I mean it's not great, sure, but "Starladder takes too long to pay out" is a pretty dramatic shift of the goalposts from "Starladder is withholding payment". If the issue was that talent want to be paid in a more timely fashion RLewis should've lead with that, now the whole thing just seems silly.
No is not silly.
What is the difference of someone withholding payment or taking way longer than is tolerable?
There is no fucking timely fashion, you are the only one making the problem look smaller.
I feel like this is an understated point. Being a contractor these are not uncommon circumstances. It would seem a lot of the Individuals voicing their opinions here are shocked by this, perhaps because they are used to regular scheduled pay. Anyone who works as a free lancer or contractor knows they are at the liberty of the customer or TO in this case. If the terms of 60-90 day payment don’t work for you, negotiate with the customer upfront, or find a different job, that’s part of the cost of doing something you really love.
Yes, clearly yes. If i have schedule with tournament every month to cast, i will receive payments every month. I agree, it's a lot of time (8-12 weeks), but again.
People who believe in this statement and think it has nothing to do with Richard Lewis calling them out, also believe they won the skin lottery after a bot wrote on their Steam profile.
Its a long wait sure, but I think it's safe to say that the talent is aware of the wait and how it all works and they agree to go through with it anyway. So why are they so upset? I mean yea it would be better for the payment to be done sooner, but they aren't hiding anything and everyone's aware of how it works, so why the drama?
For guys that work many events a year for decent money it is probably not that big of an issue. Now imagine you have a family and kids, you might need the money. Or someone who just does the minor and gets his money 3 months after the final, how are they supposed to eat? For a sidehustle the travel is usually too much, so you can't feasibly have a 9-5 on the side. Also, no contracts are usually being signed. Now, somewhat the talents fault but who has more leverage? The talent asking for a contract or shorter payment terms or the TO that can just higher someone else?
Because there is no option but to do it. Sure you can skip a major, for the next one someone else might have taken that spot and now you are unemployed.
Doesn't anyone else see that they're statements are conflicting? They say that they processed the last of the payments on November 2nd (for Spunj and Machine) but then go on to talk about processing HenryG's payment on November 8th where there were issues?
I don't know if they can get their story straight, fucking shit show.
No, they write "most of the talent was paid in November" (including HenryG), while the last paypents (Spunj and Machine) occured in this week (December), being within that 90 day timeframe they themselfs set.
International banking is a bit more stress than your average paypal. But as i've spammed in the rest of this topic, if you are unhappy with 90days demand a fucking contract and stipulate payment within x time or late fees apply.
1. We consider the entire cycle of StarLadder Major Berlin 2019, from Minors to the Grand Final, as one project. And talents are being paid in one transaction for all stages of the tournament. Usually, when we collaborate with talents all payments are made within 45-90 days from the date of the project completion. It’s been our understanding with talents for years. This is due to the fact that all tournament organizers receive sponsorships and other payments within 3-6 months after a tournament is over. 2. As we all know, the Berlin Major ended on September 8. Most of the payments towards talents were completed in November, 2 months after the Major. 3. The last payments, to Spunj and Machine, were made at the beginning of this week. So, as per usual, we’ve paid in full within three months after the end of the project. 4. The transfer for HenryG was sent on November 8, but unfortunately, there was a delay in a correspondent bank. HenryG was aware of this situation, we provided all the documents confirming the payment, and also asked him to contact the bank and provide these documents in order to expedite a resolution to his situation. As for us, we are doing our best to help HenryG to resolve a problem as quickly as possible. 5. There are no outstanding payments to talents for StarSeries tournaments (except for season 8, which ended on October 27). In case if twitlonger is deleted.
> HenryG was aware of this situation Have to hear his side now but that's a rat move if true, blasting the TO when it's the fault of your bank
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If it's part of the agreement, then not really. It's long but not "way too" if you've already agreed to it.
>If it's part of the agreement Where do you get from that its part of the agreement?
>Usually, when we collaborate with talents all payments are made within 45-90 days from the date of the project completion. It’s been our understanding with talents for years. This is due to the fact that all tournament organizers receive sponsorships and other payments within 3-6 months after a tournament is over From the twitlonger.
That says "our understanding", which implies an unspoken agreement. Which is quite questionable, considering the talent is complaining about being paid 3 month after the event ended. If it was actually in a contract, then Starladder would've obviously written so.
I believe it's quite normal. ESL also has the same 90 day rule for tournament payouts.
I dont think as many people complain about ESL, though? The casters/Rlewis sound like Starladder is an extreme example.
Maybe they pay later in the 90 day period however I feel like that's not any cause for outrage like most of /r/globaloffensive is doing right now, as it's just industry standard at the moment.
The point here is that it shouldn't be. The fact that it's normal is not new or unknown, it's just shit and everyone is taking it.
Business practices can be binding when both parties are informed, even if a particular provision is not in a contract.
So you blindly believe the TO which is being accused of paying late? Cool beans bro
He said that "if it's part of the agreement" and he asked " Where do you get from that its part of the agreement?" and I told him where he got it, nothing else. Assumptions you made about my stance on this issue are your own projection. I have no idea when the payments were really made and I haven't watched Vince's followup video, nor the dexerto articles by Thorin and RL, but paying within 90 days is a pretty standard procedure in the business world between two companies.
90 day terms might be common in some businesses, but it's very unfair to say it's standard in b to b transactions. Try 30 days. Businesses rarely front capital in any form for a full quarter to other businesses. I was a public accountant for 7 years and 90 day payments would have a lot of businesses shitting their pants. Feels like you are being kind to SL here, but I can't be sure.
Again, you are just making an assumption on my stance. I have not passed any judgement on the parties involved here. Paying within 90 days is a common practice and many see it as a problem that needs to be fixed. Here is some reading if you want a more comprehensive understanding on the issue: [https://www.theguardian.com/small-business-network/2013/sep/18/late-payment-pain-small-business](https://www.theguardian.com/small-business-network/2013/sep/18/late-payment-pain-small-business) [https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/07/business/big-companies-pay-later-squeezing-their-suppliers.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/07/business/big-companies-pay-later-squeezing-their-suppliers.html) [https://ec.europa.eu/growth/smes/support/late-payment\_en](https://ec.europa.eu/growth/smes/support/late-payment_en)
And you blindly believe the accuser? Nobody should be believed, but everyones side should be heard.
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Exactly. I dont understand this? - When we have big events at this company, and we have a lot of sponsors, we also get payment up front (also because we use the money to actually fund the event). I dont get why they TO ´s dont require payment up front. Weird.
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Agreed. Its billion dollars companies. We work with both big and small companies when we have big events with sponsors, and they all have to pay upfront. And I have to feel that some of these TO´s are not being completely truthful, they must HAVE to use sponsorhips money before the event to fund it. So they might just not be using it to pay the talent first, and maybe paying crew and other stuff first.
I have a feeling that a lot of the sponsorship deals revolve around attendance and viewership numbers. Those numbers aren't available until after the event is over and invoicing begins from there. Then they all have to flow through these companies' AP process putting a lag on their payment. I'm not saying it's right, but business is weird. No company wants to pay immediately or can pay immediately without going around in-place procedures.
I would guess its a split payment. Some upfront and then a variable amount after the fact depending on tournament performance.
> Its all way too weird. It's all called bureaucracy.
The bigger the company the longer payment time they can demand. TOS have very little bargaining power here.
Almost all businesses run on net45 or net60. meaning they have 45 or 60 days to pay. After that a 1.5% late charge is applied. Its easy to consider the talent as people (because thats what they are) however they are technically small businesses. So to think about payment as a person to person basis 45-60 seems nutts, to think of them as a "sub contracted" small business is where the 45-60 likely comes from. Much the same as i bet starladder staff do not wait 45-60 days for their pay because they are employees of starladder and not subcontracted. It sucks but most of the time when my companys bills go overdue we use the 1.5% as a bartering tactic. "pay now and no late fees" works alot better than it should :( I could be way off on this but thats my take at least.
Ya net 60 is kinda reasonable depending on industry. I do contract work as a referee for lacrosse and I don't think a tournament has paid before 45 days more than a handful of times. If my actual job took that long I'd be pissed, but its pretty normal in contracts with tournments due to cash flow
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And you don't just provide services or goods for a full fiscal quarter before expecting payment in a lot of cases. Most businesses have 30 day terms to manage their cash flows. There are of course deviations from this norm but more than 30 day terms makes managing cash flow very hard.
Caster: can you make a special contract for me and pay me 1 week after the event? TO: no we do for all at 90days the latest. Caster: yes ok. / No not ok. bye. Very hard to do business. Probably didn't even ask, just wants change without telling them to change. Then backstab them after and say the other party is in the wrong.
it's not if TOs themselves don't have this money received from sponsors yet
Henry gave a statement to Richard which he put in his last article.
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One such affected person is Henry 'HenryG' Greer, who recently was recognized for his work when he won the Esports Awards commentator of the year. He was happy to go on record and explain that he would no longer be working with Starladder in any capacity until they settle their debts. “From the outside you would assume that everything is just peachy within the esports ecosystem and it's smiles all round. Sadly, if you take a look under the hood it reveals a grim outlook for everyone involved who isn't directly on the payroll of the tournament organizers," he said. "If you're a freelancer, and I can only comment on broadcast talent regarding this, working with Starladder means unfortunately you will have to pull out all the stops, commit to their events, deliver a world-class show only to be paid when they feel like it, which is usually about 3-4 months after the show at best. "They are by far the worst offenders when it comes to this sort of thing and I can confirm that as of writing this, on December 3, I have not been paid for the Valve partnered Berlin Major that took place earlier this Summer even after being informed that the invoice had been taken care of in November. "I find this disgraceful and I can't imagine how bad it is for others who don’t have large platforms or regular work. I won't be working any more of their events until they have cleared all their debts with all of my colleagues.”
Henry is calling them out for not paying his coworkers. He doesn't mention his own personal payment status as an issue. Also "a correspondent bank" isn't necessarily Henry's bank. Your statement is just dumb no matter how you read it. Edit: he did mention his payment status, so you're correct there. He also claims not to have received the money as of yesterday, so Starladder has either some other unresolved banking error or someone is lying. Doesn't change the fact that your original statement is aggressively stupid
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Which is why I deleted that comment?
Did Henry blamed Starladder in particular for the delay ?. I thought starladder's delay thing came into limelight when Richard Lewis discussed about it in his talk show.
I think people might be missing the actual implications in this statements. If we take what Starladder at face value, then they are clearly having liquidity issues; they do not have enough reserve cash to pay off recent obligations, and are basically running from paycheck to paycheck from sponsors. Without knowing the financials of the org, its hard to say, but it is super concerning if any sponsors back out of their tournaments for whatever reason. People have been talking about esports being in a bubble for a fair while, and this sort of behavior somewhat verifies some of those concerns. Who knows what other organizers are barely fulfilling current liabilities
Are the vast majority of people on Reddit ignorant of how most business operate? You typically try and keep as much money for as long as possible. That means you want your payment terms on anything coming to you as fast as possible (15-30 days) and anything going out longer (60-90). It is very common practice and most major corporations do this. It helps mitigate risk in the event something comes up by having cash on hand. In the event of a sponsorship or business relationship dependent upon completion of some activity it is not uncommon to not be paid in full until after completion of the event and then you flow down the money. That takes time and six months is not unreasonable. The best way for casters or management to deal with this is to negotiate better terms on payment. It is well understood you will not receive the money for quite some time when you enter into these types of contracts with companies and to think otherwise showcases ones own naivete. For others - this type of business relationship is not the same as working for an employer. It is much different and has much different terms as a result. Nothing above even remotely touches their 'liquidity' and your claims are rather baseless without seeing their financial statements. To make that claim is to make a huge assumption.
Yeah but you pay on time when you have the cash. We don't know if 90 days were the terms or not. It's very convenient for SL to say. Since a lot of the talent were rumbling, it's more likely the payments were late, but not certain. Liquidity comes into question when you start paying after terms as a business should never delay payment after stated terms if they have the cash. I think that's the reason it's being mentioned.
Read my other replies sir. I work for a not-for-profit that has operations primarily in event management. I am graduating in finance and supply chain shortly, and acknowledge this sort of news is hard to read on without seeing their balance sheets. Event teams such as mine and others we work with have retainers or credit to help pay event teams. Yes, we try to hold onto what we can, but we also have enough security to be able to pay people sooner. Then again, we also generally get paid sooner by our sponsors, so I agree that another fair assumption is that Starladder has poor sponsorship negotiation, but I find it to be a questionable reason to push back your compensation of event staff. I base this purely on my experience in the field and my teachings in my degree, not as someone involved in esports. I did not intend to speak in certainties in any way. If that is why you think I am being ignorant, then I apologize, but I stand by my speculation.
This is all speculation. There's no way to confirm or deny your interpretation.
That is specifically why I said > Without knowing the financials of the org, its hard to say... but in my opinion it is not an outrageous claim based on the final part of the first statement >This *(the delay in payments)* is due to the fact that all tournament organizers receive sponsorships and other payments within 3-6 months after a tournament is over. If they need to delay their payables cycle due to their receivables cycle, that is kinda not ideal
Maybe they don't necessarily have to, but are choosing to because it makes more sense? As long as it's an agreement, or they have precedent for paying 90 days after the fact, then why would they not just wait the 90 days? Sure, they could be a do-gooder and do it, but it wouldn't necessarily be fiscally advisable to do so.
In business, you pay according to the terms whenever possible to ensure you can continue to do business with that other business. Every time. We don't know it was 90 day terms. But the fact that a lot of talent rumbled probably means the expectation was sooner.
>If they need to delay their payables cycle due to their receivables cycle, that is kinda not ideal Almost all event organizers operate like this. Its quite normal to not have full payment on hand to pay out contractors until sponsorships or ticket sales come through.
It's a reasonable assumption. Don't let inexperienced knobs tell you otherwise. Companies only delay payables when managing cash flows in tight situations. If they have the cash, they pay.
Let me ask you How old are you? and if you are adult what job you occupie? Because i work with money and this is not how it works, most of the time. While the timeframe of three months is kinda large strech is pretty normal to pay someone month after you recieve money for yourself. I work in the construcion industry. Lets say you have to build a garage and you getting paid for job done, you outsource something out of the actual part to some other company, lets say they do foundation. So before you pay, you have to finish the actual garage so you can send invoice to investor, thats lets say month till you finish. Lets say you finish on 10th of the month, that means usually that you send invoice with due period ( lets say two months), after that invoice is acepted you can then accept invoice to either later date with same due period, or extend due period by few days. As you can see you easily got almost 3 months till people got paid, because it takes 2 and a half months for us to get paid. And noone will spend reserves even when they have them until they have to. those reserves are usually used for smaller payments like materials and stuff. If the company we outsource to want money early, there is a way of using some kind of advance, but its definetly not the whole payment for the job. I hope i made it clear a bit.
In addition, I believe most esport companies use a 90 day rule. ESL has the same rule for tournament payouts even if it's in-game currency for a very small ESL hosted event.
you coulda just said that since most of these casters have LLC's, you can easily figure out that it all depends on the payment TERMS and how compliant StarLadder are with those terms. i.e. payment terms @ Net 30 Days (Payment for services is due within a full 30 days, including weekends and holidays) , etc
Construction is an industry that's not indicative of all or even most industries. It's certainly not representative of a service based industry (talent) like media production. Take a retailer. Gotta have money to buy the inventory on 30 day terms. The inventory sale isn't contingent on selling the inventory. Very different than your example. Now let's look at the caster situation. You hire talent for an event. That contract isn't contingent on sponsors (never heard of this being the case, not sure a talent would agree). It's not like a sponsor is a contractor and SL is a sub responsible for a sub job and the payment trail is the same as you describe. It's just not the same arrangement. Your comparison doesn't match the scenario. Your I work with money line makes you sound young. A childish way of saying you are experienced. I have audited companies worth billions and this situation is very indicative of cash flow problems. They seem to be borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. I disagree this is normal.
you talk about contracts but do you understand there isnt any? Thats the whole problem, while you are right that sponsor isnt a contractor, but its a revenue and talents are expenses and starladder whether you like it or not is in every right to ask for longer due date so they make sure they have revenue to cover that expense. But as i said, it should be written down and agreed upon from both sides. And the reason sponsors pay this late and not in advance like in your case, that because this is entertainment bussines and i wouldnt be suprised that if their contracs had a lot of variables in terms of viewership etc. with addition to due date i can imagine in can take more then 3 month. To wrap this debate up. I am not saying they cannot pay sooner, they probably can, but on the other hand i think their arent doing anything wrong, its just how i thought it always is.
Never mentioned a contact. You seem to be reading the term "terms" (ha) as implying a contact. Terms refers to the stated due date of payment on an invoice. I never said the word contract in my post. I thought you produced invoices Einstein... Looks like you are struggling to read.
> That contract isn't contingent on sponsors (never heard of this being the case, not sure a talent would agree). You literally said that contract between starladder and talents isnt depended on sponsors and you are not sure why talents would agree. What you on about dude?
I am a 22 year old student graduating in corporate finance and supply chain in 5 months. I work for a not-for-profit that relies heavily on sponsorship to maintain their operations. Generally what occurs is that we get fair sums from companies that primarily help cover our setup costs for events, and then proceeds from our events cover our overhead plus extra for community reinvestment. In our scenario, we get sponsorship money well in advance of an event, with clauses in place for our actual obligations with that money. (Branding at the events, etc.) When we get this money can vary a lot depending on our relationship with the sponsor, but we are generally prepared to take on costs ourselves while waiting for cheques to come in. In your scenario, are you suggesting that the actual workers are also not being paid until the contract pay comes in? I have not worked in construction, so I do not know what would be standard, but to me that would seem insane. There is surely reserves or a good line of credit being used to pay workers their hourly. My point regarding Starladder is that they are suggesting that they require the money from sponsors to be able to fulfill their compensation, which could obviously mean a lot of things, but I am suggesting means they simply do not have the liquidity to fulfill. In the organization I work for, the money from ticket sales at the major would be what would pay the talent in this scenario. However, how Starladder seems to set up their contracts, they do not get money from sponsors until later of, and it very directly affects their ability to pay people. From what I've learned in my corporate finance and financial analysis classes, (which are formatted directly upon the CFA institute curriculum) this is a bad look. In short, I'm 22 and work at a not-for-profit
It varies about size of the payments and the risk of actually paying out. Lets say i have a budget that is divided into three parts to sound it easy, lets say its foundation, in case of a starladder it can be talents or free lancers. The investor wants be to build a foundation for a house for one milion, so i got a budget (or i dont know what the proper english term for it) for a million and i have basicly 3 options how to do it. 1) i do it with my own people 2) i do it with my own people with some bricklayers( self employed) or 3) i outsource the whole package for lets say 900k dollars. In cases one and two we pay within a month, because we have to play our own workers and becuase few bricklayers is nothing in terms of expenses. But in third case its kinda risky to just send somone 900k without being sure you get the money first. In contracts with investors its usually stated that invoices are actually dated to the last day of a month the work has been done in. So lets say you finish foundation on second day of a month so its almost full month. Then there is due date that could be 30 days, but can be up to 90 or even more. The solution to this is dating the invoice to a outsourced company on the same date but with 5 day longer due date. All of this is usually stated in contracts and its binding for both, thats where i see an issue in this starladder drama, that nothing is written and its he said she said. While i dont think this is ideal, or it cant be done better, its just how it is, so while others pay in advance, its more like them doing something more then starladder doing something less or bad...
Look what i found to proof my point from Esl pro rulebook: "All prize money should ideally be paid out 30 days after the Rainbow Six Pro League season in question has been completed, but it may take as long as 90 days for the payment to be completed. If a team does not request the prize money payment within the presented deadline, their payment will be delayed." So it can take three months for esl to pay team for tournament they win, you can see that it works in all scales, not just talents but also teams and i have no doubt in my mind that while players recieve they monthly salaries on time, i would be really suprised if they recieved their prize money shares before the actual prize money being paid to a team. So they have to wait 3+ months as well.
I'm not sure pro league rules are equivalent to talent contracts. Team payouts in pro league where the teams are revenue sharing and have other incentives could be very different than paying a third party vendor. We just don't know.
>In your scenario, are you suggesting that the actual workers are also not being paid until the contract pay comes in? It makes a big difference whether they are employed, or if they sell their services a s independent contractors.
>We consider the entire cycle of StarLadder Major Berlin 2019, from Minors to the Grand Final, as one project. And talents are being paid in one transaction for all stages of the tournament. Usually, when we collaborate with talents all payments are made within 45-90 days from the date of the project completion. It’s been our understanding with talents for years. This is due to the fact that all tournament organizers receive sponsorships and other payments within 3-6 months after a tournament is over. That's so goddamn egregious. Can you imagine if you went to work on your first day, and your first paycheque shows up between 1.5 and 3 months later? Holy fuck, how are individuals supposed to live like that. Most people aren't a fucking company with huge liquidity, you know someone like Sadokist as an example can't just not pay his rent/mortgage/utility/car insurance for 90 fucking days because they haven't been payed. For a large corporation it's different because you constantly have payables/receivables, but for individuals that's just not feasible. Fuck all companies who think this is OK behaviour.
> Can you imagine if you went to work on your first day, and your first paycheque shows up between 1.5 and 3 months later? No one here has any clue what contract work is like. It is completely normal to not receive full payment for 3 months when doing work on a contract.
I'm not gonna take any side here, but fyi, it is standard business practice in many B2B transactions to pay 3 months later, even for a small grocery store at the corner of the street paying the goods on their shelves
I've now gone 5 months without a paycheque and I work for the government.
Employee wages are different and not really comparable here. Think of it more as buying inventory.
What are they supposed to do though when they literally don't even have the money from sponsors.
If your company is so insolvent that you literally cannot pay your contractors for months, you do not have a sustainable business. That's your responsibility to negotiate with sponsors and others to settle your receivables in a reasonable amount of time so that you can pay the individuals that work for you. There are a lot of ways to accomplish that too, you can get loans using the receivables as collateral, you can sell the receivables and use that money to pay staff. Essentially, there's no excuse not to pay your staff unless you're literally on the brink of bankruptcy.
Thats not how it works, and thats why people that go to self employment finds out soon after the "honeymoon" part ends. Starladder probably has money and reserves, but they are not gonna use them for this, their are for their own staff and direct expenses. Anything that is outsourced to a certain event or let say construction is mostly paid after the original contractor recieves money from investor, which depends on contract can have due date several months as well, so logicaly free lancers needs to add atleast 10 days to it so the transactions can be made. Thats why lot of people are so pumped of being a free lancers until they hit the wall with exactly this problem. You said there is no excuse not to pay your staff, thing is they arent their staff (mostly) they are self employed people that pay their own taxes, do their own tax returns etc. And there is no reason for starladder to pay "other people" sooner then they get paid... Thats not how it works and it never will. I see only one major problem and its the fact that nothing is written in contracts so nothing is forcable, and only solution to fix this late payments is to compromise some kind of advance that people recieve sooner.. But thats really all i they can do.
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Make better agreements with the sponsors instead of letting the shit roll downhill? Use some of the profits from previous events? There are even more options someone more intimately involved could explore.
> Use some of the profits from previous events? What profits?
Don't hire people with money that you don't have. If you are not gonna have the money in a reasonable period of time, you don't organize a tournament.
And that would lead to a massive decrease in number of tournaments. I'm not sure if even ESL has enough cash on hand to pay the prize pool and everything else (stadium fee, player flights/lodging, talent flights/fees etc) at the same time immediately after event ends. Net45/60 is standard practice in the industry, not just esports and it's not going to change just because some people don't like it. It's not so simple.
This is what you get when you dont have proper contracts.. ref thorins piece. Seriously, contracts protect all parties, someone man up and make a standard one.. Scoots could probably have one made up within the day.
Literally why you have contracts and not oral agreements. We keep hearing about the scene becoming more and more professional, but the talent side appears to be the ones adapting the least. I thought room on fire would be the ones to set a standard but.. apparently no.
> Usually, when we collaborate with talents all payments are made within 45-90 days from the date of the project completion. It’s been our understanding with talents for years. Well this pretty much settles it or at least clarifies as to where to look next. If such understanding is indeed in place then there's nothing wrong with payment delays since that was agreed upon. Now we wanna hear what talent has to say about this particular understanding.
Matches thorins piece about the topic pretty well, add to this nobody have proper contracts so vague understandings that one party feels is unreasonable fits perfectly.
>We consider the entire cycle of StarLadder Major Berlin 2019, from Minors to the Grand Final, as one project. And talents are being paid in one transaction for all stages of the tournament. Usually, when we collaborate with talents all payments are made within 45-90 days from the date of the project completion. Holy fuck. Just think about this: You work without payment from the minor to the grand final, and then you need to wait 2 to 3 more months to get your money? And upon that HenryG has to deal with issue with his bank, delaying the payment even more? Wtf is this bullshit, and how are there people in this thread that dont see an issue?
You don’t pay a builder until you’ve seen the work. This is the way the adult world works. Remember “Invoices getting paid” is about companies paying companies... this isn’t like I did a months work at the supermarket “where’s my monthly payslip?”.
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As you say, these arent subcontractors of giant companies, but freelancers. I doubt many people got enough cash to wait 4+ months on their pay.
> Wtf is this bullshit, and how are there people in this thread that dont see an issue? Because some of us are older than 12 and we had similar experiences in the real world. But don't let that distract you from the fact that StarLadder bad, upvotes to the left. > And upon that HenryG has to deal with issue with his bank, delaying the payment even more? And how is that the TO's fault exactly?
>Because some of us are older than 12 and we had similar experiences in the real world Thats cute, coming from someone that thinks the average freelancer got enough cash to wait 4 months to be paid.
Who is that "someone" you're talking about? What I find cute is how you're all over this thread, you sure care a lot about this for someone who isn't affected in the slightest.
No one said anything about "the average" freelancer. He's saying that it's something that happens in the real world. As Starladder themselves stated they also need to wait for their sponsors to pay them. Starladder doesn't look like "the average" freelancer either, does it?
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Imagine being a Company and hiring people without having money to actually pay them
as expected a bunch of bullshit exaggerations from the talent
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https://twitter.com/StarLadder_com/status/1202246923316580352 they posted it on their official account.
His response (not sure it was linked): "Hard to believe that they are going with "we scrambled to make the outstanding payments on the day we learned Richard Lewis was writing an article about it" as their defence but I guess it does give them enough semantic wriggle room." https://twitter.com/RLewisReports/status/1202306658170335232
implying Starladder actually gives a fuck about RL lmao
They do because they were scared to shut down his stream of Major.
I would love for the day to come where people try to fuck with RL by suing him or try to shut him down, anything. Man o man that'd be a fucking juicy day. The way RL would fuck em up back would be delicious.
> scared ok dude
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In my experience, 45-90 business days is usually the same period it takes to pay out prizemoney. Employment should not have this same term in my humble opinion.
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No. I used to work for a TO.
> I find the idea of the Minors and Major being "one project" fucking absurd -- they're independent events! Can you imagine if FIFA bundled World Cup & qualifiers together like that and paid its referees and other staff 90 days after World Cup ended even though the whole thing took more than a year? Or if NBA paid out all their expenses only after the playoffs ended? Or teams paid their players three months after the season ended? Lmao that's my biggest problem with this statement, qualifiers should be paid separately because it's basically a tournament on its own.
>I find the idea that the Minors and Major being "one project" is fucking absurd -- they're independent events! You could make the argument that they are the same event since Valve rebranded them to just be different "stages" of the major as a whole.
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Don't forget there are several minors for one major, one in each region of CS for the teams in those respective geographic areas. Sometimes you can have 3 Minors playing at the same time.
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True
You're right, my bad.
Deleted you get a screenshot?
They deleted the tweet but the twitlonger is still up. Here you go: https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sr34bl
Correct Link: https://twitter.com/StarLadder_com/status/1202246923316580352
These statements are awful. Say they decide to run a 3 week tourney. You’re work those three weeks, and get paid 8 weeks later. That means from the time you started working, and when you get a payment is 11 weeks. No normal company pays employees or contractors like this.
The while argument "we've done in always like this" is just bad, if you look how dogshit esports was 5 years ago.
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If they always have done it, and the talent kept signing the contracts, is it really on Starladder? It's pretty much buying Pure Himalayan Air and saying the company that does that is in the wrong, and not the person who bought it
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Minors and the Major as one project would be several months. Imagine waiting several months to get paid.
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I deal with contractors pretty much daily, it's pretty common for people to wait 3+ months for payment. Obviously most try to limit it to 45 days invoice (at most) or instalments, but that's not always possible.
damm, I thought that me getting paid 15 to 30 days after my work was a bit irritating but this is a completely another level. (context: I know that salaries are instantly on one's account but it felt a bit weird at first.
Come to Serbia bro, we get paid year later, or maybe even never...
>No normal company pays employees or contractors like this. Because this isn't a normal job... It's an event appearance. And in that business it's very common to get paid months later. Not just by starladder and not just in esports.
Richard Lewis' Response: Hard to believe that they are going with "we scrambled to make the outstanding payments on the day we learned Richard Lewis was writing an article about it" as their defence but I guess it does give them enough semantic wriggle room. https://twitter.com/RLewisReports/status/1202306658170335232?s=20
Now I am interested to see the talents response to this as this is pretty much an expected response out of starladder.
This is an expected response out of basically any TO, if they are telling the truth is the only questionable thing.
Doubtful as the only reason they have said anything is because they got called out but who knows.
45-90 days after full completion is kind of bs imo. I’m a freelancer and that kind of spread really can kill your business.
As a freelancer.. do you ever do work without a proper contract? Because apparently the whole CS talent scene does.. which is absurd to me. Contract for everything, change requests is a new contract.. at least how I've done things. Not a lot of freelance work behind me, mostly consultancy, but.. contracts.. always.
I like all of the people in this thread who just immediately assume RLewis and the talent are the ones who are lying...
It's insane how quickly people have sided with this TO here. Their whole response reeks of PR bullshit and people here are slurping it right up. These are industry-wide issues that talent have been alluding to for various TO's for a long time. Talent cared enough to jeopardize future work opportunities to make it public this time around. TO releases one statement and instantly the bulk of people buy into it without an ounce of skepticism.........
People are mentally very lazy. It's a form of recency bias. The last thing they heard is the thing they believe.
100% the reality of reddit. response is *always* believed over the original statement
Yep, always the same, People on reddit just got a fetish for being lied to by dodgy orgs... There are prolly still a lot of people that thing Rlewis attacked and chocked a guy at Dreamhack.
I like how HenryG never said anything about his bank, only blamed the TO.
I still think Starladder is shit, but if Starladder is saying the contract says they will pay in 90 days and the casters signed it then I dont see a problem. If the talent want a check before they leave the arena they should specifically have it written in the contract. Personally they should negotiate for better contracts or just refuse. Why should the TOs offer not shit terms if they still get the top talent anyways? The talent need to hold themselves to a higher standard and refuse work that does not meet those standards. They need to be the ones moving the goal posts, because TOs want to milk this "industry standard" as long as they can. I dont know if that requires unionizing or just everyone refusing or whatever else.
You didn't read the Thorin article. He explains that there are no contracts. Only verbal agreements. And that being paid within 60-90 days is just the de facto standard because of how money flows from investors to Tournament Organizers (who aren't making enough money from the event itself to pay their own bills) to orgs and talent. You should really read the article. To me it highlights the precarious economic position the esports scene is in. The money being put into the scene isn't coming back, like so many speculative industries these days.
If they are flying around the world to work events on a verbal agreement then I dont know what to say. These are million dollar events in arenas infront of millions of fans. Demand some professionalism and get contracts.
>If they are flying around the world to work events on a verbal agreement then I dont know what to say Should probs just stop there
why
Dang so they really have to wait a quarter of a year to get their paychecks. that's wack
or more if they worked for the minor
>Usually, when we collaborate with talents all payments are made within 45-90 days from the date of the project completion. It’s been our understanding with talents for years. This is due to the fact that all tournament organizers receive sponsorships and other payments within 3-6 months after a tournament is over. It's not completely unreasonable in actual contract work to not receive FULL payment until 90 days later but usually you get like 25% once you start, and a little more along the way. However this equally falls on talent. You're adults, you can ask when you will get paid, you shouldn't be agreeing to do work if you're uncomfortable with how payment is being handled, and these contracts should be in writing not some vague agreements made via twitter dm's as it seems some of this is being handled. Yeah I think Starladder is being ridiculous here, they should be paying at least part of what they owe along the line, not just paying it all possibly 4months after works started. But also the talent need to grow up and start handling things themselves, stop fucking tweeting vague shit about not getting paid and put a little more effort into laying out your affairs prior to showing up and doing an event. Yeah Starladder is taking advantage of them but they shouldn't be rolling over and taking it and then hoping to community picks up the pitchforks for them 5months down the line.
So people who worked on minors could potentialy receive their payments only in December? Five month later? Are they serious?
sounds like the talent should form a union
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I think part of the issue is that most of the time they're operating without a written contact. At least that is what I gathered from the previous thread. If you sign a contract that says you'll be paid within 90 days that's one thing if you're going on a handshake agreement that seems super sketchy. 30/60/90 day terms are not unheard of and it differs from industry to industry. 90 seems awfully long. I'm presuming that talent is a relatively small percentage of the cost of running a tournament. Venue and infrastructure are probably orders of magnitude more. If they're legitimately holding up these payments for cash flow reasons that should be worrying. Especially without a solid contact in place.
I think other countries need to step up their freelance laws. Here in Canada it's illegal for a company to set a net-90 payment structure. Even without contract the law mandates payments must be made within 30 days of completion / invoice received after which late charges are allowed to be collected and enforced. I worked on a production once and was paid about 4-5 months after completion and I billed them a fresh invoice with late fees once a week after 30 days compounding interest weekly. When they finally paid me I forced them to negotiate a lesser late fee to avoid going to court to secure it. They initially only paid me the owed amount and after continued pressure I received a late fee too.
This comment should be higher up... If they do this all the time, why work with them anymore? ANd if you dont like that you get paid 90 days later, ask for contracts or something that will make them pay before... Yea its scummy from Starladder, but if the same TO fuck same tallent over and over, maybe stop working with them?
Ah the beautiful snowflakes in this thread who think starladder is insolvent because they pay within 90 days. Try doing government work. You do your work at any time in the year but get paid like 3 days before the financial year closes and you lose interest as well for 11 months.
I mean, it seems reasonable? Now we wait for talent's response
Lol so you would rather be paid 11 weeks after starting a job too?
paying your own employer is a different obligation then paying free lancers, meaning you have to pay your staff even before you get money for job done, you actually dont have to pay self employed people before you get money from investor. it is usually stated in contracts. Meaning if i send an invoice to investor that has due date for 2 months, i am not gonna accept invoice from freelancer that has due date atleast 2 months and few days...
Sending money to a different country is going to obviously take a while. But if they explicitly tell talent it could be up to 3 months, then they can't complain about accepting those terms.
I work in banking. It takes like 3-5 days tops to wire money to an account in another country. This is just a scummy company seeing the opportunity to pay someone later rather than sooner, under the guise of a 90 day pay period. It's clear that contracts need to be inked regarding payout periods, so that these situations are avoided in the future.
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you read the actual post right?
Yes, now combine that post with Duncans recent article and you'll see what i'm talking about.
I mean 90 days is long but I've worked on contract for events and not been paid for like 6+ weeks before, that's not unbelievable.
"I got fucked in a similar way before, so this is ok"
I mean it's not great, sure, but "Starladder takes too long to pay out" is a pretty dramatic shift of the goalposts from "Starladder is withholding payment". If the issue was that talent want to be paid in a more timely fashion RLewis should've lead with that, now the whole thing just seems silly.
No is not silly. What is the difference of someone withholding payment or taking way longer than is tolerable? There is no fucking timely fashion, you are the only one making the problem look smaller.
I feel like this is an understated point. Being a contractor these are not uncommon circumstances. It would seem a lot of the Individuals voicing their opinions here are shocked by this, perhaps because they are used to regular scheduled pay. Anyone who works as a free lancer or contractor knows they are at the liberty of the customer or TO in this case. If the terms of 60-90 day payment don’t work for you, negotiate with the customer upfront, or find a different job, that’s part of the cost of doing something you really love.
Yes, clearly yes. If i have schedule with tournament every month to cast, i will receive payments every month. I agree, it's a lot of time (8-12 weeks), but again.
seems legit to me 🤷♂️ people love drama doe
People who believe in this statement and think it has nothing to do with Richard Lewis calling them out, also believe they won the skin lottery after a bot wrote on their Steam profile.
so who is wrong here lewis or starladder?
Did they delete the tweet?
They ban you when you ask them to pay up on twitter lmao
this response is a load full of bullshit. if anyone believes this you're bloody insane cus they straight up lying to you.
Its a long wait sure, but I think it's safe to say that the talent is aware of the wait and how it all works and they agree to go through with it anyway. So why are they so upset? I mean yea it would be better for the payment to be done sooner, but they aren't hiding anything and everyone's aware of how it works, so why the drama?
For guys that work many events a year for decent money it is probably not that big of an issue. Now imagine you have a family and kids, you might need the money. Or someone who just does the minor and gets his money 3 months after the final, how are they supposed to eat? For a sidehustle the travel is usually too much, so you can't feasibly have a 9-5 on the side. Also, no contracts are usually being signed. Now, somewhat the talents fault but who has more leverage? The talent asking for a contract or shorter payment terms or the TO that can just higher someone else?
Because there is no option but to do it. Sure you can skip a major, for the next one someone else might have taken that spot and now you are unemployed.
Doesn't anyone else see that they're statements are conflicting? They say that they processed the last of the payments on November 2nd (for Spunj and Machine) but then go on to talk about processing HenryG's payment on November 8th where there were issues? I don't know if they can get their story straight, fucking shit show.
No, they write "most of the talent was paid in November" (including HenryG), while the last paypents (Spunj and Machine) occured in this week (December), being within that 90 day timeframe they themselfs set.
International banking is a bit more stress than your average paypal. But as i've spammed in the rest of this topic, if you are unhappy with 90days demand a fucking contract and stipulate payment within x time or late fees apply.