Major Esports Team TSM Drops Record-Breaking $210M Sponsorship Deal with FTX

cryptonews.com:

Professional esports organization TSM has suspended its partnership with FTX and dropped ‘FTX’ from its name. And it's far from being the only company to end a business deal with the collapsed crypto exchange.

Per the TSM announcement, the FTX branding will be removed from player jerseys, as well as from all media profiles owned by the organization, the team, and the players. 

It stated that,

“This process may take some time to complete as some social platforms have made changes to their product features.”

This was likely referring to Twitter as TSM was unable to change its name there and remove ‘FTX’ from it due to Twitter’s new verification rules.

The announcement added that TSM is a stable, strong, and profitable organization, which expects to see profit this and in the coming years.

TSM added that,

“The current situation with FTX does not affect any part of TSM’s operating plan, which was set earlier this year.”

TSM partnered with FTX in June 2021, and at the time, the multi-year partnership was valued at $210 million. “As part of this historic new relationship, FTX.com and FTX.US have, together, secured exclusive naming rights for TSM, which will now be known as 'TSM FTX',” they said.

The partnership announcement also stated that TSM would distribute crypto to each of its players and employees and would purchase $1 million in FTT, FTX's native token.

However, according to The Washington Post, citing a TSM spokesperson,

“TSM has not held FTT since Q2 2022. We do not hold any cryptocurrency on our balance sheet currently.”

The spokesperson also claimed that TSM did not distribute FTT to employees.

As reported, on November 11, CEO Sam Bankman-Fried resigned, and the exchange filed for bankruptcy. Furthermore, FTX is under