TSM pauses most of its esports operations, per report

The financial viability of esports organizations have been under the spotlight for the last few weeks due to the reported restructuring of FaZe, the strategic review of Astralis, and the ask for cash from Heroic.

Now, as Kevin Hitt of the Sports Business Journal reports, TSM will be pausing most of its esports operations and potentially selling its League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) franchise slot.

It was just last year that Dominic Kallas, VP of Esports for TSM at the time, had announced in a video that the organization was pursuing a Counter-Strike team that would eventually compete in the Paris Major. However, due to timing concerns at the time of the qualifications, the roster acquisition would be pushed until after the BLAST.tv Paris Major. Kallas departed the organization at the beginning of March.

TSM was infamously impacted by the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX as the organization agreed to a 10-year, $210 million naming rights deal which went askew when the company went bankrupt. TSM said at the time that it was still in a financially solvent position and were profitable.

With that said, TSM has already begun pausing esports operations, which includes the Rainbow Six: Siege team that they released earlier this year.

Given the report, questions now concern the viability of a Counter-Strike team as the organization appears to be shifting away from esports operations. The community at a time was hoping for the re-introduction of the organization, but that no longer appears to be in the cards.

SBJ and Kevin Hitt also report that TSM will focus on its Blitz application, a tool that works with video games to help players develop in-game skills and strategy in titles such as League of Legends, VALORANT, and was recently announced to work with Counter-Strike.