Official statement of December 2, 2022 at 9:30 pm

As you already know, our Counter-Strike Global Offensive (CS:GO) team is engaged in the ESL National Championship Switzerland. The team has brilliantly qualified for the grand final against Babos Gaming.

Unfortunately, an outpouring of hatred and erroneous or incomplete information has begun to circulate regarding the holding of this final.

First of all, it is imperative to know that the date communicated to the teams for this event was Sunday, December 4, 2022. Only a few days ago, the organizer of the ESL Swiss competition decided unilaterally, without any explanation or consultation with our management, to change this date to Saturday, December 3, 2022. As a result, we are unable to field our full roster because our player "S3NSEY" is absent due to a major family incident (and we take this opportunity to send him all our support).

Facing this, a request has been sent to ESL Swiss to respect the announced schedule and to play this final at a later date and all this in agreement with Babos Gaming. This request, which seems logical in itself, was refused by ESL Swiss. It should be known that a club like ours, does not engage only players on the planning, it is a whole staff around the communication, the management of the players and the PR which is planned for such an important final. The impacts are therefore important.

This annoying situation put us in an uncomfortable position because the teams were locked for the playoffs and this prevented us from being able to field 5 players on December 3, 2022.

Our player EXR1G, who we remind you is a substitute and should not play this final, is engaged in another international competition and cannot be available on this new date.

As for our second substitute CousCous, he has put aside his activities on the competitive scene for an indefinite period of time in order to concentrate on his private life (https://twitter.com/CousCous_CS/status/1595160248339566592). It was therefore unthinkable for us at this stage to play a Swiss final with an untrained player who has other priorities. We put a huge importance on the health of our players. In addition, CousCous was part of the Babos Gaming Academy and we did not want to line up a player against his old structure to avoid any annoying situation for him. It should be noted, that we had to take CousCous initially as a replacement due to a lack of time from the administrators of ESL Swiss. A request had been made by our management to reschedule a National Championship Switzerland match during the SwitzerLAN weekend. The request was refused because the whole case was managed too late by the ESL staff, we were obliged to take a replacement or else we would have had to withdraw. CousCous was playing at that time, the savior at the last minute.

As a result, we made ESL Swiss face its responsibilities. Since they "changed the rules of the game" by changing the date of the final. We proposed to have a substitute available so that the final could be played. ESL considered our proposal to be acceptable only if S3NSEY was not replaced by a professional player.

After having refused a replacement proposal judged not valid (level apparently too high whereas not professional as requested), then an acceptance for another player, an agreement in principle had been found. The story would be too beautiful if it stopped there but a new turn of events appeared because ESL Swiss went back on its own decision. Finally, the league administrators would only let us play with our registered players at the beginning of the playoffs or else we would have to forfeit. All this while taking hours to respond to us and giving us extremely short deadlines

It should be noted that ESL Swiss is not new to contentious decisions. During the semi-finals this season, an administrator started a game by mistake. We won 2:0 before he stopped everything because the stream had not started. So we had to start the game again without taking into account the first two rounds of the previous game.

In light of this information, it is clear that we feel prejudiced by the decisions made against us by the organizer. No guidelines have been followed. We have been penalized by three decisions since the beginning of the competition. Since the beginning of this situation, we have been proposing solutions and alternatives to ESL and we have asked multiple times for a meeting between Babos Gaming, ESL and us in order to finally find a solution. Everything has been refused.

We accept the fact that our team has not had a stable fifth player recently and that a lot of progress needs to be made in order to not generate frustration for other stable, punctual teams with no special demands. We are currently working hard to have this corrected. A general review at end of 2022 will be done internally to propose much better in 2023 and contribute to the development of the local scene as our initial goal wanted. We are aware that performance is not everything.

We also understand the frustration that the situation generates, especially for our opponents Babos Gaming. We have tried to talk to their CS:GO team manager to find a common solution, but we have only received a disrespectful response in return.
It is also painful that one of their players dares to imply that we have corrupted ESL Swiss. This is slanderous/calumnious and does not reflect the efforts of our management to find solutions with as little fuss as possible.

It is also scandalous that the coach of Babos Gaming can openly insult the Lausanne-Sport Esports on social networks and be supported by leaders of Swiss entities.

We finally add that it is intolerable that members of Lausanne-Sport Esports are threatened on social networks or in private messages. The frustration and the contentious aspect of this final should not allow to tolerate acts of cyberharassment. From this communiqué, the Lausanne-Sport Esports reserves the right to carry out the necessary actions to punish these acts.

In conclusion, the final will be played!

We will play the CSGO ESL National Championship Switzerland final with our substitute CousCous tomorrow Saturday, December 3rd. We would like to thank him for his open-mindedness and for his willingness to propose a final played rather than won by forfeit. We made sure with him that this was not too uncomfortable despite the suffocating pressure of this case and around him.

After this deadline, we will reconsider whether it is still appropriate for us to participate in future competitions administered by ESL Swiss.

Finally, all acts of hatred are considered intolerable, and we hope that everyone will be able to take a step back from the various attacks, most of which are free and unfounded via social networks.

The committee of Lausanne-Sport Esports.