Esportz.in’s prize money scandal reaches 15 months of delay

Esportz.in is yet to disburse a total cash prize of ₹4 lakhs, even after more than 16 months since the event's conclusion, confirmed by multiple players from the winning teams coming forward to share their plight

Esportz hosted one of the first CS2 LANs in India when they announced the Esportz Premier Series 2024, which featured a prize pool of ₹4 lakhs for the main event and ₹1 lakh for the two qualifiers.

The event took place in January 2024, where Enigma Gaming secured first place, earning a prize of ₹2,50,000, while Marcos Gaming, the runner-up, was slated to receive ₹1,25,000. Additionally, an MVP award of ₹25,000 was to be awarded to Hattygod.

Dust2 India was able to verify through reV3nnnn, SpawN, and Bhavi that their teams have yet to receive any prize money from the Finals. reV3nnnn and Bhavi represented Marcos Gaming, while SpawN played for Enigma Gaming.

Dust2 India then reached out to Enigma Gaming's former manager Siddhant Jagtap, who shared more details from the organization’s perspective. Jagtap had attempted to contact Abhishek, a member of the Esportz.in team, on multiple occasions to reach a concrete resolution, but his requests were never properly addressed.

Only giving dates and excuses whenever we ask for the prize money they kept saying that it will be done by this weekend or that weekend some kind of bullshit excuses also says let me talk to finance team and get back to you. But I haven’t gotten a single penny yet from them and they are just ignoring us week by week day by day.
reV3nnnn, ex-Marcos Gaming

As you can see in the screenshot, he stopped replying to me completely and last time, when I had a talk with him, he said he would need Marcos' account, 'We can not give the prize money to you guys.' Then we contacted Marcos and gave them their account, but it's been a month still nothing from that.
Bhavi, Gods Reign

Every day, I kept getting excuses from Esportz about the prize money delays saying things like 'we're close to processing it.' Recently, they started using a new excuse, that it's their policy to send the prize money to the org. But this only came up long after the tournament had ended, and by which point Enigma had already shut down. hattygOD was supposed to receive ₹25,000 as the MVP, which had nothing to do with the org and was clearly meant to go directly to the player yet even that hasn't been processed. The owner, Varun, has blocked all the players and is unreachable by phone. JK kept stalling, even gave me a number of some Sunil who is supposed to be their finance head and he wasted my time for over a month. It is really frustrating how these TOs like Esportz not only scam the players, make false promises, but also blatantly lie on top of that.
SpawN, ex-Enigma Gaming

Enigma Gaming had been trying to reach out to JK and Abhishek since last January. JK kept giving us excuses and empty assurances that the amount was about to be processed. As for Abhishek, he kept ignoring us and when we finally heard back from him, it was to invite us to participate in another tournament, with no confirmation on the messages we had sent earlier. They have yet to disburse the prize money for their first qualifier, the winner’s prize, or the MVP award. They’ve continued to delay with lies and empty promises, making no actual effort to pay the prize money.
Siddhant, ex-Manager, Enigma Gaming

Dust2 India reached out to JK from Esportz.in but did not receive an official statement at the time of publication. Attempts to contact Esportz.in through multiple email channels also went unanswered.