Fnatic founder Sam Mathews has responded to the news that Cloud9 have bought the Overwatch League franchise spot in London.
It was a surprising announcement considering Fnatic are the biggest esports organisation based in London. They have offices there and the Bunkr event space.
Sam tweeted the following:
Waking up to a massive to @fnatic from @overwatchleague felt great… pic.twitter.com/KcdSj5Xmyb
— Sam Mathews (@sammathews) August 10, 2017
His tweet implies that Fnatic had negotiated with Blizzard for a spot, but hadn’t been informed it’d been given to Cloud9 – until now.
Sam also tweeted Cloud9 founder and CEO Jack Etienne with a seemingly sarcastic comment:
Welcome to LDN @C9Jack, come say FNC 10k SQFT HQ & bunkr. I’ll intro you to a few ESPORTS people, after you touch down for the 1st time! pic.twitter.com/8uf0GumNgg
— Sam Mathews (@sammathews) August 10, 2017
Etienne said in the original announcement: “We have a massive fanbase in Europe already, and London, in particular, I believe is under-served and doesn’t have an esports team to call its own.”
It’s not clear if Etienne was making a sly dig at Fnatic or if he genuinely doesn’t know Fnatic are based here, but you’d think a person of Jack’s calibre in esports would know that London is home to Fnatic.
Jack has not yet responded to Sam’s tweets, though he did tweet a picture of an old London bus.
— Jack Etienne (@C9Jack) August 10, 2017
Calling all heroes….
Birmingham
Manchester
Leeds
Liverpool
Sheffield
London #OverwatchLeaguehttps://t.co/Tu6Phl0qt1— Jack Etienne (@C9Jack) August 10, 2017
We’ve reached out to both parties for further comment.
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
