London Spitfire officially announced over Twitter yesterday that they have released their roster of seven players.
It is with heavy hearts that we must announce that we must bid farewell to our players. We have offered free agency to most of our players to ensure that they can find a new team to thrive in with the least amount of resistance. #AcesHigh pic.twitter.com/PqRIKHGAEn
— London Spitfire (@Spitfire) October 15, 2020
This news comes after a particularly rough finish in the Overwatch League. They placed 17th 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
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.
Image Credits | London Spitfire
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.
