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The CS2 scene lost a major player. YaLLa Compass won’t continue their 1.5M prize pool tournament series. And what’s more alarming; Players, staff, and talents are owed over a million dollars.
How did YaLLa Esports, the organizer of multiple Tier 1 and 2 CS2 tournaments, end up with over a million dollars in debt? On Aug. 6, the organization quietly announced that it was closing its operations.
It all started with an X post by the Arab company. The two-sentence statement said that “the YaLLa Compass journey has come to an end.” Then, they proceeded to close all their other social media channels and the website.
A day later, we learned that their problems were bigger than the end of their series of tournaments. Luís Mira, HLTV’s Lead Reporter, postedan article with over five thousand wordssharing players, organizations, casters, and even the co-owner’s side of the story. All of them pointed fingers at one man: Klaus Kajetski, YaLLa’s founder and CEO.
Who is YaLLa Esports in debt with, and what’s the status of their payments?
Currently, YaLLa’s million-dollar debt is split between teams, players, and their former staff. Due to privacy concerns, most of the complaints are anonymous. However, some were very vocal about the money they are owed through social media.
Wadih Al Sayah, YaLLa Esports co-owner, also raised his voice about this topic. He was removed from the organization earlier in 2025 and is owed an estimated amount of at least $272,000. After going through legal proceedings against the organization, he received a part of the money owed. However, his soul was crushed by the situation.
Al Sayah said that the end of YaLLa was like “a stab in the heart,” and he’s still hurting about it. He saw the rise of their esports teams before Klaus closed all of them to focus on tournament organizations. He wasn’t pleased with this decision. The cessation of the esports team’s operations happened shortly after their Honor of Kings team’s successful International Championship 2022 run. They earned $250,000, which was paid by Tencent, but some players didn’t receive their prize money.
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We can deduce from HLTV’s report that YaLLa Esports CEO already knew of the multiple operational issues his company had years ago. Closing all of their esports teams out of the blue was a major red flag. They also made multiple mistakes across this process:
We strongly suggest that you read thefull article by HLTV. Stay tuned for more news atesports.gg!
