North Esports Leaves Gaming Scene Due To COVID-19

In a statement on the official F.C. Copenhagen website, Danish organisation North Esports announced on Friday that they would be shutting down their esports division and instead focusing on the growth of their core businesses.

Parken Sport & Entertainment og Nordisk Film har på baggrund af en strategisk fokusering besluttet at afvikle det fælles e-sportsselskab, North. #fcklive https://t.co/YwpPQ5cND2

— F.C. København (@FCKobenhavn) February 5, 2021

The organisation, created by Nordisk Film and Parken Sport & Entertainment (owners of F.C. Copenhagen), began in 2017 and had several Esports teams across varying competitive games. The most successful of which has been their Counterstrike: Global Offensive team, who have won numerous DreamHack events, including the S-tier event, DreamHack Masters Stockholm in 2018.

North’s Esports Legacy

North are also the owners of both a FIFA esports team and an Apex Legends team. F.C. Copenhagen will be taking over operations of the FIFA team, looking to still have them compete in the eSuperliga, while the Apex and CS: GO teams are to be dissolved.

According to the North owners, there is still “potential in esports and gaming” for them, however it is “far away and uncertain.” The global pandemic was cited as the main cause of the disbandment of North esports, with Parken and Nordisk stating that their esports goals had been set back “years into the future” and that the “esports and sports industry as a whole have been hit hard financially.”

The Next Move for North’s Partners

The two owners of North are still intending to work together in the future “where the match is the right thing to do” and used their statement to thank everyone involved in the collaboration. They had searched for other co-investors to help bolster the company throughout the pandemic, but did not find “right match”, stating that they required “significant continued investment to create a sustainable business.”

This announcement has come only a few weeks after North Esports picked up the Swedish play Denis “grux” Gutaj for their CS: GO squad. This signage was supposed to be part of their “long-term Talent Development strategy”, as outlined in a posting on their website on September 4th 2020 and seems to indicate that the owners were blindsided by the financial problems that COVID-19 has caused the Esports industry over the last year.