BLAST Premier sided with Saudi Arabia for a bizarrely outlandish new city that will apparently be the ‘heart of innovation’ named Neom. The project of a Saudi Arabian prince finding himself with too much money, the idea is unironically to attempt to encourage young and progressive idealists into the new city in a deal that has seen $500 billion already sunk into the project.
Bringing progressives into Saudi Arabia, in case you missed that; the same nation that levies execution towards LGBT and atheists.
The surreal reality of the middle east wouldn’t even be a talking point if not for Saudi Arabia reaching out to League of Legends and Counter-Strike TOs in an attempt to have them host tourney’s at the ‘city of paradise’.
LEC agreed to the deal with the city of Neom, then rescinded the agreement after fury arose online that League would partner with a nation that has an egregious record of human rights, or lack thereof; multiple staff members that have worked with LEC in the past laid their job on the line, stating that LEC either rescinds the agreement or they refuse to go live for the organization.
If you don’t support human rights then I can’t support you.
BLAST partnering with NEOM does not align with what they claim to stand for.
I stand by Harry, my colleagues and every person who has been persecuted by archaic Governments for being themselves. https://t.co/D50AosBYVz
— Hugo (@HugoTV) August 5, 2020
BLAST/RFRSH have faced similar blowback from the community and staff, yet have yet to rescind their partnership; some are noting that perhaps the RFRSH Entertainment organization simply cannot afford to, but that hasn’t stopped the TO from receiving a massive collective message from fans; don’t side with those that seek to kill us.
It’s a bizarre message to even need to state, but money has a tendency of making some forget any form of ethics.
Jason ‘Moses’ O’Toole sent an email to BLAST/RFRSH that DBLTAP was able to get a hold of, where it stated that the silence from BLAST regarding the blowback has been ‘deafening’.
This is increasing in fervor from multiple analysts and scene-professionals, such as Duncan Shields, Frankie Ward, and Hugo Byron all sending their own thoughts on the disgusting partnership between BLAST and Saudi Arabia.
It’s blood money, and RFRSH clearly has no stipulations about giving themselves a bit of an economic push using the money that has been steeped in the blood of minorities and natives that Saudi Arabia has aggregated over decades of oppression and murder of anyone that dared oppose the regime.
If RFRSH isn’t going to back away from the deal, then the next step is for the on-air talent to refuse to show, forcing RFRSH to find new talent willing to broadcast from a spectacularly unstable region. If they show regardless, the entire ordeal will go down as grandstanding rather than anything else.