North American team SportsBetExpert have released their players and left Counter-Strike. The owner, who runs the betting tips business behind the team, says it was costing him more than $20,000 a month while he made no money from it.
The decision was announced on the team’s X account, which owner Peter “Pete187” Anadio also uses for his betting picks. On Sunday he wrote that the players had been told they were free to look for other opportunities. A day later, he explained why.
It was costing me over $20k a month to fund a professional counterstrike 2 team. I was not making any money and didn’t really care to, I just wanted to break even and give back to the community.
He added that he was “happy to be saving this money now”. Earlier on Sunday, he wrote that his hesitation to stay had “nothing to do with my teams performance recently”, but that he was “not sure if it’s worth it for me from a financial standpoint”. On 11 October, he had complained about near misses at several North American LANs and said the team should probably have beaten Wildcard, Gamdom and NRG, writing that he had “probably spent north of $75k in 3 months trying to make this team great”.
The players want to stay together
The lineup consisted of five Americans: Ian “motm” Hardy, Infinite, consti, shane and Peeping, with Brennan “Aureo” O’Connell as coach. Peeping, consti and Infinite had been on the team for five months, shane for four and motm for one.
Their best results in 2026 came at regional level: second place at the ESEA Season 58 North America Finals, second at FRAG Midwest St. Louis and wins at NSTLGA League Season 2 and FRAG Got Your 6 Gaming. SportsBetExpert sit 63rd in Valve’s Regional Standings and 13th in the Americas, far from a place at the Singapore Major.
The owner said he would give the players the $7,500 from the ESEA Finals as a bonus “to bridge any gap to a new team”. On Sunday evening, as the exit loomed, motm asked the community for help to keep the roster intact.
