The Electronic Sports League has released a statement on its current issue with late payments of prize money to gamers that won it during competitions and tournaments managed by the Esports firm. It stated that although traditionally there had been some problems with gamers receiving their prizes within a timely manner, it plans to rectify that in the future and will have all outstanding payments made by the end of February.

“Over the last 12 years the ESL has paid out over $12,000,000 in prize money,” begins the statement on the ESL website. “Historically, there have been issues with some prize money being paid late. We have worked hard to eradicate these issues over the last 18 months and are now working on the final, remaining backlog of overdue prizes. We can announce today that this process will be completed by the end of February and there will be no overdue prize money at that point.”

It also suggested that in order to alleviate any further concerns, CEO at ESL Ralf Reichert, would be holding an AMA on Reddit early next week, to discuss with fans and haters alike, the company's policies moving forward.

If an outstanding payment remains unpaid after February, for whatever reason, the ESL is urging those affected to get in touch via a complaint ticketing system at: http://www.esl.eu/eu/prizemoney.

Whether you're a fan of Esports or not, you should still see why I'm beginning to love them. Here's my top four reasons that Esports are better than “real” sports.

KitGuru Says: Good to see them making a pledge to improve payments going forward. It makes it much more likely that the ESL / MLG partnership will continue to bear fruit.

Become a Patron!