Copenhagen Flames closes operations

Danish esports organisation Copenhagen Flames have announced that they have filed for bankruptcy and have laid off all of the staff and personnel.

Copenhagen Flames stated that they had filed for bankruptcy on April 28, 2023 and were working to fix their monetary problem but there were no solutions. The Danish organisation had announced two weeks ago that they were looking for an investment of kr 5,000,000.00 to 'restructure and lay the foundations for profitability in 2024". The Flames had cut their Fortnite roster and staff on January 1, 2023 and since then were looking for investors whilst reducing costs internally.

Copenhagen Flames though aren't the only one who has been affected by the current economic situation around the world. Recently Tricked also shut down operations while HEROIC also stated that they were looking for investors to stay afloat.

"With the financial crisis and the way it affected us already at the end of last year, we started looking into how to reduce our spending. We cut the Fortnite roster and personnel on the 1st of January while analyzing all spending. We ramped up our search for partners and began investor talks early this year. We discussed different scenarios of reducing costs even further both internally and with potential investors and did pretty much everything to get a plan in place that would help us fund the club for another year. Throughout this process investors have been interested in the club, but have been put off by how the esports scene has developed the past year. Clubs cutting costs, terminating personnel, investors having to cover losses and so on. And of course the fact that we needed money straight away wasn’t exactly attractive. Sadly we were denied time and time again and failed to secure the funds needed to save the club."
Steffen Thomsen, CEO at Copenhagen Flames

Known for developing and giving a platform to young and upcoming talent from Denmark, Copenhagen Flames developed some of the top players in the game today such as HooXi, niccodoz, roeJ, Zyphon and jabbi amongst others. The organisation's highlight was their qualification to the PGL Major Stockholm 2021 and their playoffs run at the PGL Major Antwerp 2022.

Once the core of the team left to join bigger tier 1 teams, Copenhagen Flames were struggling not only financially but in the server as well, and they failed to qualify for the BLAST.tv Paris Major.