North American streamer team Near Airport (NA) has officially disbanded, stepping down from competitive ahead of the second NACL split of the 2025 season.
The announcement was made through a video on the official Near Airport YouTube channel, explaining the reasons behind the decision to stop.
With the initial goal of creating a team of notable personalities from the space, similar to Marc ‘Caedrel‘ Lamont’s Los Ratones, former LCS champion Yiliang ‘Doublelift’ Peng created a squad that could work its way to the top of the North American scene.
After bringing in former pros such as Eugene ‘Pobelter‘ Park, Mingyi ‘Spica‘ Lu, and Vincent ‘Biofrost‘ Wang, Near Airport picked up streamer Ashkan ‘TFBlade‘ Homayouni to round up the roster.
What looked on paper a strong roster, capable of fighting for the top spots in NACL, Near Airport struggled to compete for the title, finishing fourth place in the first split after losing to Convinction in the playoffs.
Diverging ideas among the Near Airport players
In the video, which gathered all the players and Head Coach Chris ‘Croissant‘ Sun, the team explained the struggles in finding a common direction. Pobelter had previously expressed his frustration regarding the lack of consistent practice, where sometimes the team would only scrim one day a week.
“I thought we should either all in or nothing, we didn’t practice a lot in spring split and I feel like we could probably be the best team, but scrimming one day a week, a lot of conflicting schedules, it made things really hard for us to be the best team possible,” he said.
The players realised that their lives outside of professional play were becoming an issue for all of them, ultimately slowing down the progress and the ability to maximise their gameplay. Doublelift, in particular, expressed his unwillingness to commit his day-to-day fully to competitive gaming.
“I remember those pro days where the only thing in my life that mattered was being the best player I could be, and I’m not that guy anymore. I’m different now,” Doublelift explained.
Even though the team won’t be part of the NACL anymore, Doublelift has said collaborations are still possible between the players for streamer tournaments and showmatches. NA’s departure also means that three teams, instead of the usual two, will be able to promote to the NACL’s second split. The promotion tournament will take place on June 19th-22nd.
