World Esports Association seemingly leaked, includes major esports teams and brands

In a post on the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive sub-Reddit today, someone leaked the picture of a poster above. This image appears to reveal the existence of something called the World Esports Association, or WESA. The Redditor was then accused of leaking a major announcement and deleted the image.

So what is WESA? The mystery figure who leaked the image did not provide that information. However, it's clear from the picture that this Association includes some big names in the esports world, including tournament organizer ESL and major esports teams such as Fnatic, Na'vi, Ninjas in Pyjamas, Mouseesports, G2, Virtus Pro and more.

All of the team organizations listed have devoted Counter-Strike teams, though many also have teams focused on other popular competitive games such as League of Legends and Hearthstone. Notably, all of the organizations involved, including ESL, are based in Europe.

Since the post went up, numerous follow-up discussions have popped up on the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive sub-Reddit, as well as around Twitter and other social networks. The running theory in the community is that the World Esports Association will be an association of teams that agrees to only play in tournaments run by organizers who are also under the WESA banner.

In theory, this could ensure a degree of parity between tournaments run by different companies when it comes to quality of the broadcast, payouts and other details, but it could also be counterproductive to the teams involved. The reaction from the community has been largely negative.

We've reached out to ESL to try to get more information on what WESA is and will update the story if we hear back.