USEA faces uncertain future after months of silence from league and CEO Ben Williamson

Back in May 2024, the United States Esports Affiliation (USEA) suddenly burst onto the scene with plans to host a massive $350,000 event in the United States that would culminate in an eight-team LAN finals. At the time, this announcement was met with a fair degree of skepticism from the community as the massive scale of the event seemed too good to be true from a new and completely untested tournament organizer.

At the time of the announcement, CEO Ben Williamson worked to assuage fears about the project and encourage the community to trust the USEA, however after months of complete silence from Williamson and the USEA it seems that the high degree of skepticism from the community may have been well placed.

The USEA essentially came into existence on May 20th with a series of posts on X and other social platforms, giving many their first look at Williamson's ambitious $350,000 league. Concerningly, this also became the final time any details about the league were shared, with USEA's X account going dormant since then outside of a series of posts about IEM Dallas 2024 in early June.

A similar situation has played out on the USEA's other social media accounts, with the tournament organizer's Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube accounts either being entirely blank or dormant since May 20th. As for Discord, there have been no messages from Williamson in the server since May 20th while the most recent post from someone involved with USEA was from purported USEA Co-Founder named "nastee" in Discord on September 11th where he admitted to struggling to find funding and a title sponsor for the league. nastee did not respond to multiple requests for comment by Dust2.us on Discord.

Outside of nastee and Williamson, there is only one other individual with the owner role on the USEA discord (the role curiously named "Bill Belichick") is an individual named James. He responded to Dust2.us on November 20th, identifying himself as an "assistant to the owners" of USEA. He offered to try and help the publication reach out to Williamson, however he admitted he had not heard from Williamson for some time, with a lack of further follow-up messages suggesting he was equally unsuccessful in his attempt to contact the USEA's CEO. Ahead of publication he further stated that he still had not heard from Williamson.

Shifting the focus back to Ben Williamson, the USEA's CEO has a fairly small social media presence outside of his LinkedIn profile. However, this provides some interesting insights as it shows he has been quite active with other projects outside of the USEA. Since May 20th, Williamson has posted nine times about Sensiva Health, a healthcare company that Williamson was named CEO of on September 23rd.

Over the course of the past month, Dust2.us has made extensive efforts to contact Williamson for this story via the USEA X account, Williamson's LinkedIn account, an email address associated with the USEA, via a contact form on Sensiva Health's website, a publicly listed phone number on one of his company's websites, and his Discord account.

All of these avenues failed to bear fruit, with no reply at the time of publication from the online accounts, while the phone number immediately went to a full voicemail. Dust2.us made one final effort to contact Williamson ahead of publication of this story and will release an update should he reply.

So where does this leave the USEA League? With Williamson making no mention of the league since May and all of the league's accounts dormant for seven months, a charitable reading would say the USEA is regrouping for 2025, while a less charitable forecast would question whether the league would ever come to fruition based on how quickly it seemingly unraveled.

Another serious issue facing the USEA is that the organization's trademark appears to be in serious jeopardy. Based on a "non-final Office action" posted by a lawyer representing the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on November 29th, the USPTO objected to the USEA's trademark application on multiple fronts. While loaded with jargon and case law, it appears the USPTO objects to the USEA's use of "United States" as it does not clearly define the service they provide, only their location of base, and an advisory to the use of "Esports Affiliation" without disclaiming “exclusive use” due to the generic nature of the phrase.

According to the notice, the USEA has three months from issue to respond and amend or contest the objections, with a failure to do so leaving the USEA trademark application marked as abandoned on February 28th, 2025.

Overall, the lack of communication on the future of the league and the new trademark issues suggest an unlikely future for the United States Esports Affiliation after months of neglect and inattention. Should they resolve these issues and come back for 2025, the tournament organizer will likely have a difficult road ahead of them to regain the community's trust after promising a massive tournament and utterly failing to deliver on that premise.