Former LFL team being sued for late payments

Former LFL team Mirage Elyandra is being sued by two staff members for late payments, L’Equipe reported earlier today. The organization is also being accused of providing poor training conditions to its roster in the 2022 season.

The staff members sued B&L, the association that served as an intermediary between them and Mirage on French soil. One staff member alleges they received only 20 percent of their total salary, and the other staffer claims they have not been paid for six months after payments were previously delayed.

After joining the LFL, Mirage Elyandra didn’t show much promise despite signing some big names in the summer, such as sOAZ as coach and Febiven as midlaner. The League of Legends roster stagnated at the bottom of the rankings in 2022, which may come as no surprise if the alleged financial shortcomings are true.

In addition to an alleged lack of payment to some staff members, former players told L’Equipe they dealt with poor training conditions at Mirage. They claim they were housed far from the city in a facility with faulty equipment.

“Internet crashed all the time, sometimes during official matches. We were promised two meals a day, but sometimes, it was absolutely inedible,” said a former player. “We had hot water, but we couldn’t charge up our phones. The oven, microwave, everything was breaking the fuses.”

The team’s financial hurdles appeared shortly after it joined the league ahead of the 2022 season. In June, it was reported the team already sold its spot in the league because of Mirage’s financial difficulties.

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It wasn’t enough for the organization to cover all its debts, however. Some employees say they worked for Mirage without written contracts and had no claim to receive their payments.

Afterward, Highlight Event, which had invested in the organization, also went through hurdles when its owner Alexander Studhalter was sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the Treasury for a financial venture linked to Vladimir Putin. This ultimately led the team to leave the league.

The organization was specifically created to apply and join the league ahead of the 2022 season as a collaboration between Quebec-based Mirage Esports and France’s Elyandra Esport, which already had qualified for the LFL in the promotion tournament.

Now, B&L’s CEO Marvin Lagrange said he intended to sue Mirage’s and Elyandra’s CEOs. He said he was promised a $600,000 budget but only received $100,000 throughout the season.