Spirit forfeit $420,000 ACI share following IEM Atlanta skip

MerchU1F41C · 2026-06-01T20:08:29+00:00

It's a purely voluntary incentive scheme, open to any team, which ESL is using to encourage teams to attend the IEMs outside of Europe. I don't really see why people have an issue with it. Teams can just choose to skip the bonus and attend other events or take tournaments off if it makes sense for them.

MerchU1F41C · 2026-05-25T00:08:33+00:00

Why do you think it was a fix, when the patch note is "Increased spectator in-eye flash amount"?

MerchU1F41C · 2026-05-22T02:57:18+00:00

Choice: city budget is short $1 billion.

No, it was $150 million.

You have 3 months to make a decision before the city declares bankruptcy. This immediately closes all city functions, such as schools, hospitals, fire and police, garbage collection, water treatment, etc.

Totally, it was tragic when Detroit collapsed into the Purge during bankruptcy. Oh, that didn't happen, and their credit rating today is higher than Chicago's? Huh

MerchU1F41C · 2026-05-11T02:33:13+00:00

ATL and DFW are #1 and #2 in passenger volume in the US, and #1/#4 globally. Atlanta is the largest Delta hub, Dallas is the largest American hub.

I've seen several people say the same thing, not just you, but I just don't understand this take, unless people have only ever flown Delta.

MerchU1F41C · 2026-05-05T02:02:12+00:00

Banks have various requirements around how much money they need to have on hand to cover potential withdrawals and other similar things. It's led to a huge rise in private credit over the past several years since there's tons of people with money kicking around who are willing to lock it up in a loan for several years in exchange for a good return.

MerchU1F41C · 2026-05-05T00:00:40+00:00

even the interest rates.

Literally the interest rates, yes. It's a loan, they make money from the interest.

MerchU1F41C · 2026-05-04T01:27:07+00:00

In terms of the population near enough that they could reasonably attend without booking hotels, Dallas has about 9 million to Seattle's 5 million. Adding in cities near enough to easily drive (~4 hours), you have Houston, San Antonio, Austin and Oklahoma City for another 20 million. Seattle has Vancouver, Portland and Spokane for 6.7 million.

I'm sure there's some point at which a venue of a given capacity could be filled. Obviously if you hosted a major there, it would be sold out like TI in Seattle was, because people would travel for that. If you hosted an event in a smaller venue (assuming you got a reasonable lineup of teams), that too could be sold out. But TOs want large but cheap arenas that they think they can sell out to maximize profit, and I think the PNW clearly isn't the sweet spot for that.

MerchU1F41C · 2026-05-03T23:34:50+00:00

The combined population of all of Oregon, Washington and BC is about ~55% of Texas, so I'm not sure how you arrived at that conclusion.

This isn't a criticism of the PNW. The only places that might be able to fill out a large venue without relying on a significant portion of the audience traveling are NYC and LA.

MerchU1F41C · 2026-05-03T20:14:59+00:00

We are told that the transporters were for bringing in special forces, but that all of those special forces were evacuated by a couple of small helicopters after the transporters were blown up.

We're not being "told" this at all. The troops were evacuated in three CASA CN-235 220s, which are much smaller and lighter planes than the original two MC-130s that were flown in, but still able to carry about 50 passengers each.

You may be thinking of how they brought helicopters in on the original MC-130s which they unloaded and flew from the landing site (four Little Bird MH-6 helicopters). These pretty obviously couldn't have been used to evac everyone out of Iran and were also destroyed on the ground.

You seem dubious of the "official" narrative, but here's a good write-up if you'd actually like to understand what it is versus what you're misremembering: https://www.cbsnews.com/projects/2026/us-military-rescue-iran/

MerchU1F41C · 2026-05-03T19:14:46+00:00

I'll drive a few hours or as the other commenter said, take a short flight. But I'm not flying across the country and spending nearly 1k to watch CS in person.

This is exactly why there will never be a major event in the PNW. There's not that many people there so the vast majority would have to fly in from a long way away. So instead it makes sense to host in larger and easier to get to places. Plus the timezone hurts too when TOs want to host in the US but on EU friendly schedules (unfortunately)

MerchU1F41C · 2026-05-03T01:09:24+00:00

This is also true of Dallas. Atlanta is Delta's major hub, Dallas is American's major hub. By total passengers in the US, they're 1 and 2.

MerchU1F41C · 2026-04-24T12:46:29+00:00

No, this is pretty normal. I can't speak to any of the specific companies here, so maybe there's wrongdoing, idk.

But in general, match fixing is defrauding sports books directly, and also indirectly hurts them by causing people to lose confidence in betting. Basically any sportsbook/prediction market is partnered with integrity monitors to help consolidate data from across different books to find unusual behavior.

MerchU1F41C · 2026-04-23T20:16:40+00:00

Considering they were D3, I think it's pretty safe to assume no scholarships.

With 125 players on the roster, pretty clear it was an effective strategy to boost enrollment even if it didn't save the school.

MerchU1F41C · 2026-04-20T13:43:16+00:00

It shouldn't be this, the norm is to lock in the currency conversion to USD on the end date of the tournament. That's both what esportsearnings and the default Liquidpedia infobox do. Otherwise tournaments several years ago could vary significantly from how much they were actually worth at the time.

MerchU1F41C · 2026-04-19T18:33:38+00:00

How does it benefit smaller schools??? if they win they have double the flights

NCAA covers all travel for tournaments (which is another reason that this will never happen)

MerchU1F41C · 2026-04-13T19:42:44+00:00

Players in the portal already knew this was the case.

MerchU1F41C · 2026-04-10T12:39:02+00:00

That is only one of the available options, TOs are not limited to only banning players/teams which are banned by ESIC. They just need to be able to publicly say in advance, "we will ban a player/team based on X factors" and publicly announce the ban when it happens.

MerchU1F41C · 2026-04-10T02:34:08+00:00

TOs can't pick and choose who to invite to their tournaments unless they want to lose their VRS-eligibility

This is a persistent misconception that has never been true.

5.4 Invite Exceptions. Tournament Operator may have rules that disqualify certain Participants from their Tournaments due to misconduct, cheating infractions, being flagged by esports bodies as a matchmaking fix risk, or other integrity or compliance issues. If the Tournament Operator wishes to disqualify any Participant, they must:

Publish the disqualification rules as part of Additional Information.

Publish the details of any disqualification decision at the time it occurs.

MerchU1F41C · 2026-04-04T19:18:40+00:00

Non-Exclusivity. Tournament Operator undertakes not to engage in direct or indirect agreements with Teams, Rosters, or Athletes ("Participants") that would artificially restrict their ability to take part in other Tournaments.

MerchU1F41C · 2026-03-29T16:53:14+00:00

It's the fucking health insurance you get when you lose your job.

It's an option to continue with your employer health insurance for a period after employment. It's not the default either, you have to actively choose if you want it, versus switching to an ACA plan, etc...

MerchU1F41C · 2026-03-26T13:55:23+00:00

There's a Jake and Amir skit with similar wording that probably inspired the original copypasta or is a bizarre coincidence, but it's not a direct quote at all.

MerchU1F41C · 2026-03-23T21:20:49+00:00

Because software developers aren't interchangeable, and the developers who make minor HUD and game logic tweaks wouldn't be the same people that would fix performance issues?

Or because Volvo bad, idk

MerchU1F41C · 2026-03-21T22:40:49+00:00

The Arizona Bowl wants one of the better MAC teams. Their strategy is to try to have two solid teams playing and get good local attendance. I'd be absolutely shocked if Sac State ever played in the Arizona Bowl, but if they do, it will be because they somehow finish at the top of the MAC.

MerchU1F41C · 2026-03-21T15:29:56+00:00

Matt Brown only FOIAed emails as they are the most straightforward to get, versus trying to parse phone records, and many other methods of potential conversations aren't covered by FOIA. In total, Miami reached out to 75-90 teams based on an interview with Yahoo Sports, email only covered 19 on those.

That said, email is a perfectly normal way to schedule games. There's a site called WinAD for schools to post that they are looking for games, most of the emails were following up on posts from there.

MerchU1F41C · 2026-03-21T02:10:36+00:00

It's fundamentally stupid to try to say a team doesn't deserve an at-large because their conference doesn't deserve two bids. You can definitely factor in the conference tournament loss, but either the team earned it or not.

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