There's been a lot of discussion about FISSURE lately. Unfortunately, not all of it has been about our tournaments.

We still owe prize money from our CS2 and Dota 2 tournaments. We see the questions from teams, players, journalists and fans, especially as we continue to announce new projects.

I understand those questions, and I think they are fair. I also want to apologize to the teams and players who are still waiting for their prize money.

In short: we acknowledge the debt in full. Payments have been underway since the summer; around half of our CS2 debt has already been paid; Dota 2 payments began in October; and we are planning the next major phase of repayments for the first quarter of 2027. More on that below.

But before I talk about the current situation and our plans, I would like to tell you a little about us.

I think many people know FISSURE through BetBoom Dacha, major international tournaments and broadcasts. But not everyone knows where we started, how we got here and what this business really means to us.

How it all began

Our story began in 2013.

Back then, there was no FISSURE, no major sponsorship deals and no international tournaments.

We were a small group of people who loved esports. So much so that we didn't just want to play or watch tournaments. We wanted to organize them ourselves.

In the beginning, we had almost nothing.

To run events, we brought our own computers, borrowed equipment from friends, connected and set everything up ourselves, then packed it all away and drove it back after the tournaments.

We weren't drawing up financial models involving tens of millions of dollars or thinking about how to earn a place among the world's biggest tournament organizers.

We just wanted to put on a great tournament.

Then another one. And to make sure each one was better than the last.

Gradually, that grew into larger tournaments, tier-two online events and work with international clients, including in America and China.

We ran our own tournaments as well as events under our partners' brands. We learned how to produce broadcasts, work with teams, organize competitions and create content.

We couldn't match the budgets of the big companies, so we tried to compete on quality and the way we approached our work.

What set us apart was our desire to give partners and viewers more than they expected. To make something good even when we genuinely didn't have enough resources.

And I think that approach did a lot to shape what came next.

Tournaments that stay with you

One event I am still particularly proud of is Uprise Champions Cup Europe.

Of course, by today's standards, it was on a very different scale.

But those were such good times.

We came up with unusual content, spent a lot of time with the teams, played football together, went swimming and filmed all kinds of videos.

I still look back very fondly on the atmosphere at that tournament.

It didn't feel as though we were just organizers there to keep the matches on schedule, and the teams were just participants there to play and leave.

We were all part of the same event.

That was when I really understood what I loved about our work.

It wasn't simply about running a tournament, paying out the prize money and wrapping up the project.

It was about creating something people would remember. Something players would enjoy taking part in, viewers would enjoy watching and our own team could be proud of.

We tried to hold on to that approach even as our projects grew to dozens of times their original size.

The people who got us here

We have been through a lot over the past thirteen years.

We made good decisions that moved the company forward. There were also mistakes, unsuccessful projects and difficult financial situations.

But I do want to talk about the people who stood by us then.

Many kept working and believed in us and what we were building.

We looked for solutions together, got through difficult times and celebrated our first major contracts and achievements.

Over the years, our team has put in an enormous amount of work, relocated, taken many flights and worked on tournament preparations in countries around the world.

Some people spent more time working on events than they did at home.

Unfortunately, at the end of 2025, we had to part ways with many highly skilled people who were passionate about their work and wanted the company to succeed. They did everything they could to help it grow, working overtime and pushing themselves to exhaustion.
But if you asked me what I am most proud of after all these years, our team would be one of the first things I would say.

Behind every project is the work of a great many people. I want to thank FISSURE's co-founders, Andrey and Pavel, our team, everyone who has worked with us over the years, and the partners who have been with us along the way.

How we built a large business

There is something important I want to explain.

Until 2022, we grew without outside investment.

We built the company with money we earned ourselves, through our own projects and the partners who believed in us.

When we made a profit, we reinvested it in the business.

In equipment, people, production, studios and new tournaments.

Step by step, we turned our passion into a fully fledged international business.

That didn't happen by chance.

We found partners, identified promising opportunities, created products people were willing to pay for, built a strong team and kept improving the quality of our work.

Those decisions allowed a small company from a regional city to gradually establish itself internationally.

Of course, money mattered too.

We run a business, and we want it to grow and thrive. We want to provide for our families, have the freedom to make our own choices and be able to bring our ideas to life.

But what has really driven us all these years is the desire to build something of our own and do it well.

We didn't enter esports to cash in on its popularity and move on to the next promising market.

We have been doing this since 2013.

And in that time, esports has become not just our work, but a huge part of our lives.

Our partnership with BetBoom and a new stage of growth

The period from 2022 to 2025 was one of the most important chapters in our history.

We began a partnership with BetBoom that lasted three years and played a huge role in the company's growth.

I want to give our partners a special thank-you for their trust and the opportunities that partnership created.

We were able to take on projects we had previously only dreamed of: major international tournaments, the best teams in the world, large audiences and production on an entirely different scale.

At the same time, we continued investing our own resources in growing the business: money, time and the work of our team.

Another important milestone was covering The International for the first time.

There was a time when even the chance to work on a tournament like that was a big dream for us.

One particularly important moment for me came in 2023, when we built large studios in Yerevan.

I remember how happy I was.

We had once brought computers from home to run tournaments. Now we were building fully fledged professional studios that allowed us to work at an entirely different level of quality.

All of that was the result of our work together.

Then came new goals.

To run our own tier-one LAN, bring together the best players in the world and organize a Counter-Strike Major.

And if we were going to dream big, why not host The International one day?

We have always set ourselves ambitious goals.

And I think that is what took us from small local competitions to major international tournaments.

To pursue those goals, our company relocated to Serbia. It was a new chapter for both the company and its employees. We invested a great deal of effort, money and time.

But as the business grew, so did the responsibility that came with every decision.

And by the end of 2025, we faced the consequences of some of our management practices not having kept pace with the company's growth.

Our mistakes in 2025 and their consequences

In 2025, we made serious mistakes in our commercial and financial planning.

I want to explain exactly what happened.

Organizing major esports tournaments is a business in which many commitments have to be made long before the event itself.

Today, tournaments and their key details have to be announced in advance. Sponsorship and commercial contracts, however, are often signed much later.

That leaves the organizer having already made certain commitments while some of the expected income is not yet backed by contracts.

In 2025, we made decisions that did not adequately account for the possibility of things going wrong.

We expected to secure a major agreement with a partner in the international English-speaking betting market, but the contract was never signed. We also failed to bring in enough partners from other sectors to diversify our income.

In addition, at one tournament, we were unable to meet the targets for the participant lineup set out in a commercial agreement, resulting in financial losses.

As a result, the financial performance of several projects fell well short of our expectations: costs were rising, and revenue was not keeping up.

But I don't want this to sound like an attempt to blame the circumstances.

We knew how this market worked.

We made the decisions, and we understood the risks.

We should have built a financial model that allowed us to meet our obligations to teams even if things went wrong.

We failed to do that.

Were these management mistakes? Absolutely.

And responsibility for them lies with the company's leadership, including me personally.

At the same time, I think it is important not to write off everything we achieved before because of poor decisions made during one period.

Over thirteen years, we built a company that established itself internationally, created products people wanted and earned the trust of major partners.

All of that was possible because of many good decisions.

But that is precisely why we have to be mature enough to acknowledge the bad ones too.

What matters now is not to look for excuses, but to learn from what happened and put things right.

What we have changed in the business

In recent months, we have been working not only to find the funds to pay what we owe, but also to change the economics of our tournaments.

In my view, this is one of the most important things happening inside the company right now.

First, we have been working more actively with host cities, countries and local partners. These partnerships allow us to significantly reduce the operating costs of international tournaments.

Second, we have reconsidered where we hold our events.

When choosing a location, we now pay even closer attention to the economics of the project: potential audiences, ticket sales, production costs and the terms available from the hosts.

This allows us to produce high-quality events while making them more financially efficient.

Third, we have streamlined tournament spending and revised some of our production processes.

Finally, we are actively developing commercial partnerships.

Most importantly, the prize pools for new tournaments are now secured before the events begin and do not depend on the company's current finances.

Our goal is to build a model that makes our tournaments more financially sustainable and significantly reduces our dependence on any single contract or revenue source.

We are already seeing results from this work. Those results give us reason to expect the company's financial position to improve.

Of course, the risks have not disappeared. They are part of any business, especially one as complex as organizing international esports competitions.

But we now have a much better understanding of which risks we can afford to take and which we cannot.

I believe these changes are necessary not only to resolve our current problems, but also for FISSURE's future growth.

What we owe and our plan

Now to the issue that matters most to teams and players today.

We acknowledge these obligations and have no intention of walking away from them.

We are in contact with the clubs. When we have concrete updates, we reach out ourselves, and we are ready to answer questions at any time. We will agree a repayment schedule with each club individually.

Payments have been underway since the summer of 2026.

The tournament we held in China this year enabled us to pay off around half of our CS2 debt, and before the October tournament, we launched the first wave of payments to some Dota 2 teams.

In addition, we are using all available funds from other completed projects to make repayments.

But we understand that this is not enough.

We are actively working on major commercial agreements for future tournaments.

We now have a concrete financial plan that, if implemented, should allow us to carry out the next major phase of repayments as early as the first quarter of 2027.

At the same time, I do not want to announce unconfirmed amounts or present contract negotiations that are still ongoing as guaranteed incoming funds.

But these are not vague hopes that things will improve someday.

This is concrete commercial work, with financial targets, timelines and next steps that are clear to us.

In the first quarter of 2027, we will publicly report on the actual progress of payments and the results of our efforts to pay down what we owe.

I understand that people have less trust in our words today than they once did.

That is exactly why I believe our progress should be judged by what we actually do.

Why we continue to run tournaments

I understand why announcements of new projects raise questions while we still have outstanding debts.

But organizing and covering esports tournaments is our core business.

It is how we earn the money we need to meet our obligations.

Halting operations now would significantly limit our ability to repay those debts.

That is why we continue doing business, signing agreements, developing new projects and working on tournaments for the years ahead.

But we have no intention of building our future by forgetting our past.

New commercial projects must help us resolve our outstanding obligations, not create new ones.

Time to move forward

We are facing one of the most serious challenges in the company's history.

I understand that our history and past achievements do not relieve us of responsibility for our current obligations.

Players and teams must receive the prize money they have earned, regardless of the path we took to get here.

Making that happen is our responsibility.

But I also know what we have built over these years, the people we have brought together and the potential our company has.

We now need to draw on everything we have learned to correct our mistakes and continue to grow.

I also want to speak directly to the teams and players we still owe.

I understand your frustration. We are not asking you to forget about the debt or be more forgiving because of our history.

We must meet our obligations. And we will do everything necessary to make that happen.

The task ahead of us is about more than restoring financial stability and keeping the company going.

We need to improve in every area: management, financial discipline, decision-making, our approach to risk and, of course, the tournaments themselves.

Once, we dreamed of expanding beyond our own country. Then of working internationally. Then of running tier-one tournaments.

Every time we reached a new goal, new possibilities opened up.

We are once again at a point where a great deal needs to change.

But this time, the next step is not only about the scale of our projects.

It is about how strong, responsible and resilient a company we can become.

We are not going to throw away thirteen years of work because of the mistakes we have made. We are correcting them, learning the right lessons and moving forward.

We still have big dreams and ambitions. We will continue creating tournaments that our team, players and viewers will be proud of.

And we are building a company that can keep turning those dreams into reality for many years to come.

In CS, after you lose a round, the next one always begins. But in business, you cannot simply start a new round and forget the one before it. First, you have to meet your obligations to the people who counted on you.

And that is exactly what we will do.

Nikolay Vesnin
FISSURE