Overwatch League team San Francisco Shock accused of mishandling charity money
The Overwatch LeagueThe After Hours Gaming League responded after users on Reddit brought up a lack of transparency on the use of money raised in a charity drive held by the league and the San Francisco Shock.
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The Shock partnered with the AHGL a few months ago to host the “Overwatch NorCal Corporate Clash”, a corporate recreational league where each team paid towards charity to enter for an eight week season and 16 team playoff.
At the end of the league’s season, the final four teams would pay out-of-pocket to go play at a LAN event somewhere in the San Francisco/Oakland area on December 8.
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In the post on November 30 to the OverwatchTMZ subreddit, Reddit user RobertMain showed a discord message that claimed of the $11,800 raised during the fundraising from teams, only $4,000 had gone towards the charity Extra Life, with no explanation for what happened to the rest of the funds.
In addition to the $7,800 that was accused of being missing, an AHGL representative told teams on November 28 that there was no venue yet for teams to play at, leaving teams and their travel plans in the dark.
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The AHGL responded to RobertMain’s post a few hours later to clarify how the rest of the money was spent, and to confirm plans for the final LAN:
As an official representative of the After Hours Gaming League working very closely with the Shock, we would like to clarify a few points.
We first want to acknowledge that our announcement for the LAN was severely delayed, and apologize for making it complicated for competitors to plan their travels. We had secured a venue five months ago, but a third party falling through nullified those plans in recent weeks. After exploring a multitude of local alternatives, the only feasible solution was to push the event back to Sunday. We have directly communicated with semifinalists throughout this process, confirmed their availability for the new date, and are compensating them for any changes they need to make in order to attend on Sunday.
This season of AHGL Overwatch has helped raise $4000 for the local Extra Life guild benefiting the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital with remaining revenue spent on the 8 week regular season of live broadcasts and tournament management, as well as playoffs and the live finals. We hope this clears up any confusion, and once again apologize for the delay in announcing details.
The event will take place on Sunday, December 9 at Esports Arena Oakland; and in a statement to Invenglobal, the AHGL confirmed the change had been coordinated and agreed upon by the four competing teams.
