Why has Team Spirit declined IEM Rio 2024 invite? Reasons explained

In an unfortunate turn of events, Team Spirit has declined the invite to IEM Rio 2024. According to an X post from renowned CS2 content creator @OzznyCS2, a representative has confirmed that the main goal of not participating is to manage the players’ stress and exhaustion levels.

Moreover, OzznyCS2 posted a screenshot confirming Team Spirit’s marketing head had explained the reasons in reply to ESL's X post for not attending the upcoming IEM tournament.

We shed some light on why Team Spirit has declined the IEM Rio 2024 invite.

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Reasons explaining why Team Spirit has declined the IEM Rio 2024 invite

As discussed, Team Spirit’s head of marketing and partnerships, Konstantin Machaidze, has mentioned one key reason for declining the Rio 2024 event invitation. He disclosed how the season is extremely hectic with five tournaments between July to September alone.

This will leave the players with only 13 rest days, which can harm their health. So, they have dropped out to combat the stress and manage exhaustion levels. He commented:

“Hey - I can clarify. this season has EWC, Blast groups, Cologne, Dacha, Pro League (groups&playoffs) and Fall Finals. that’s ONLY Jul-Aug-Sep. 13 days without tournaments. we don’t think that this is healthy, and try to manage the players’ exhaustion levels.”

Since May 2024, the organization’s roster has participated in more than three LAN events, namely BetBoom Dacha Belgrade, IEM Dallas, BLAST Premier Spring Final, and Esports World Cup in three months. Additionally, they're about to participate in the BLAST Premier Fall Groups 2024, which starts on July 29.

You might be interested in: CS2 BLAST Premier Fall Groups 2024: Schedule, where to watch, live results, and more

Hence, it’s quite evident that the roster has followed a tight schedule and traveled a lot. It might lead them to have severe stress and exhaustion, followed by an unsatisfactory performance in the upcoming tournaments. As a result, Team Spirit’s roster decided not to participate in IEM Rio 2024.

Esports professionals are quite prone to stress. To reduce the level of that exhaustion, a break is necessary. Team Spirit has decided to follow that same path. While most netizens worldwide are already praising and supporting the decision by the European organization, others suggested not participating in tier-2 tournaments like BetBoom Dacha in the future.

Taking such a bold decision of dropping the roster from playing an S-tier tournament, Team Spirit has shown that a player’s mental health must be the top priority for an organization instead of focusing on winning massive prize pools. S-tier tournaments will happen over the years, but such empathy is a sign of a good relationship between the organization and its players.

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