Singaporean organization Bleed Esports is locked in talks with Bad News Eagles about signing the Kosovar CS:GO team, Dexerto has confirmed.
Sources said that negotiations between Bleed Esports and the team have been progressing positively and that both parties are hopeful of a positive outcome.
Bad News Eagles have established themselves as one of CS:GO’s feel-good stories, at a time when opportunities for teams that are not partnered with ESL or BLAST are rare in the scene.
Without the backing of an esports organization, the Kosovar team took advantage of the Majors’ open circuit in 2022 and qualified for PGL Major Antwerp and IEM Rio, reaching the Legends Stage of both events. In Rio de Janeiro, they even beat then-reigning Major champions FaZe before being knocked out by NAVI.
At the start of the year, the team was linked with GODSENT before the rumor was shot down by manager James Banks, who said, however, that the players had indeed received an offer to represent the Swedish organization at the Rio Major “with an option to extend”. According to Banks, talks with GODSENT broke down and did not resume.
On January 20, Bad News Eagles named Jonatan ’Devilwalk’ Lundberg as their new CS:GO coach. The Swede won two CS:GO Majors with fnatic, one as a player in 2013 and one as a coach in 2015.
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Who are Bleed Esports?
Bleed entered their first esports title in September 2021 with the signing of Valorant team UwU, the top seed from Malaysia and Singapore in the VCT SEA Stage 3 Challengers Playoffs. Before the end of the year, the Singaporean organization obtained a $50.8 million investment from Asia Venture Capital to expand its operations.
In 2022, Bleed named former BIG CS:GO player Nikola ‘LEGIJA’ Ninić as the new coach of their Valorant team, and hired Anthony ‘ImpressioN’ Lim, another ex-CS:GO player with international experience, to spearhead their esports division. The organization also expanded into Dota 2 with an Asian team headlined by Korean player Kim ‘DuBu’ Doo-young.
📍 We are thrilled to announce that Anthony "ImpressioN" Lim has joined us as Head of Esports.With his leadership & invaluable experience in Esports, we are able to seamlessly embark on our continuous expansion of building championship rosters across numerous titles.#GOBLEED pic.twitter.com/n0a1Pm7NDU
— BLEED Esports (@ggBleed) September 25, 2022
Bleed’s interest in the CS:GO scene isn’t new, with former CEO Mervyn Goh revealing in July 2022 that the organization would be expanding into European CS:GO in 2023.
In August, Dexerto reported that Bleed expressed an interest in Virtus.pro’s team, which competes under the name ‘Outsiders’. Talks quickly broke down as the two organizations were too far apart in their valuation of the team, which went on to win the IEM Rio Major.