Brazilian esports organisation Los Grandes has announced it has purchased 100 percent of North American organisation Simplicity Esports‘ Brazilian branch, becoming the sole owner of a spot in the Brazilian League of Legends Championship (CBLOL).
It comes just weeks after Los Grandes purchased 20 percent of the Brazilian branch. The announcement was made at a press conference attended by Esports Insider on June 10th. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Los Grandes now takes full ownership of Simplicity’s assets in Brazil, including its structure, professionals, and contracts, including the CBLOL spot and the brand licensing deal with the football club Clube de Regatas do Flamengo.
The CBLOL team will still be named ‘Flamengo Los Grandes’ until the end of 2022, before becoming ‘Los Grandes’ for the 2023 season.
The peripherals brand Redragon, which owned 7.5 percent of Simplicity in Brazil, had its stake bought by Los Grandes. The agreement was negotiated by marketing agency Druid, with OutField Consulting as an advisor and CBLOL owner Riot Games authorising the deal.
Ever since its 20 percent purchase, Los Grandes had plans to take over 100 percent of Simplicity’s Brazilian operations by 2023. Its plans were accelerated due to an unspecified ‘opportunity’, Los Grandes’ part-owner and board member Rodrigo Terron said in the press conference.
Since the end of 2021, Simplicity had been under scrutiny by Riot Games and the esports community due to misconduct and blackmail accusations.
The situation was aggravated after the partial purchase by Los Grandes, when the former League of Legends Flamengo Esports Academy player Leonardo ‘Lynkez’ Cassuci accused Simplicity of delaying salaries and not providing a proper structure to players.
Cassuci’s accusations caused backlash from the Brazilian esports community against Simplicity, which may have opened the aforementioned ‘opportunity’ for Los Grandes to back off from the 20 percent initial plan to invest in a full acquisition of the company.
Los Grandes’s takeover, therefore, releases pressure from the community for Riot Games to take action against Simplicity. The spot in the CBLOL, acquired in 2020, had cost the U.S organisation approximately $4m BRL (~£651,000). Los Grandes, though, did not disclose if the amount owed to Riot Games had been settled already, nor the amount the organisation paid to buy the spot from Simplicity.
After collecting controversies, having its competitive success limited to the CBLOL Academy, and seeing its stocks hit the lowest point since it started being publicly traded in the U.S (about $0.96 per quota on June 9th, 2022), Simplicity Esports finally ends its Brazilian adventure.
