Envy CEO slams Forbes esports valuations as “utter garbage”

Adam Rymer, Chief Executive Officer of Envy Gaming, has dismissed Forbes’ recent esports company valuations as “utter garbage,” after they named TSM, Cloud9 and Team Liquid as the most valuable orgs in the world. 

On December 5, Forbes published their list of the ten most valuable esports organizations in the world, offering a total value for each of the ten they listed.

Top of the list was Team SoloMid which was listed as being worth a jaw-dropping $410 million. Cloud9 and Team Liquid took the silver and bronze spots, while FaZe Clan, NRG and 100 Thieves also made the list.

However, as is fairly common with Forbes’ valuations, industry insiders have come out to criticize the list, none more notable than Envy Gaming CEO Adam Rymer.

Rymer took over as CEO of Envy in summer 2020, taking the reigns from Mike Rufail. Envy Gaming is the parent company of Team Envy, the CDL’s Dallas Empire and the Overwatch League’s Dallas Fuel.

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On his LinkedIn, Rymer said: “This Forbes analysis is utter garbage. To be clear, this is not a criticism of the organizations included/mentioned all of whom deserve to be there. I have friends at all of them and have a great respect for what they are doing across the board, but in full transparency, this is a complete “drive-by”, cursory analysis which has led me to question the entire valuation/editorial capability of Forbes.”

Rymer went on to explain that since Forbes’ last valuation (in which Envy were ranked number 8), Envy has massively expanded, added Post Malone to their ownership group and won the inaugural CDL Championships. Regardless, they missed out on a top 10 spot.

On December 7, he added more context to his post by explaining that Envy provided Forbes with requested information but refused to continue to work with them when they “learned of their changed methodology for this year’s list.”

“None of this was apparently relevant to this study to even be mentioned,” Rymer finished. “Based on the companies mentioned, one would think it was purely based on which organizations would give them the biggest article reach (which, to be fair, is certainly a contributor to value). In my honest opinion, this list has become a disservice to the entire industry.”

Rymer’s criticism is fairly scathing, and there are certainly some questions to address over the reasons behind Envy Gaming’s absence from the list.