London Spitfire Releases Entire Roster and Coaching Staff

London Spitfire officially announced over Twitter yesterday that they have released their roster of seven players.

This news comes after a particularly rough finish in the Overwatch League. They placed 17^th in the regular season and followed that up with a similarly disappointing playoffs run. In response the team dropped their line up of the following players,

• Park “Babel” Sang-jun
• Cho “Clestyn” Gun-Hee
• Jung “ALTHOUGH” Hyun-wook
• Lee “Highly” Sung-hyeok
• Kim “Jihun” Ji-hun
• Yunghoon “Krillin” Jung
• Lee “Schwi” Dong-Jae

London Spitfire said on Twitter that the players have been offered free agency to “ensure that they can find a new team to thrive in with the least amount of resistance.” This should allow the former Spitfire players to seek positions in other teams.

This marks a significant change in the organisation. It is no longer financially viable to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to recruit the top free agents every year, and judging by the results, it doesn’t always pan out.

Instead, the organisation will look to save money by focusing their recruitment efforts closer to home. They plan to cultivate their own talent by drawing from their minor league team, London Hurricane as well as recruiting players from Western Europe in an attempt to court sponsors and partnerships from brands closer to home.

Moving closer to home looks like a priority for the team. The Covid-19 pandemic and the Overwatch League 2020 forced the organisation to relocate their players and staff to South Korea. Unfortunately, the team placed last in the APAC region.

Spitfire will retain five members of their Overwatch League 2020 team, including their breakout star Lim “Glister” Gil-seong.