David Beckham’s Guild Esports hit by two key staff departures

David Beckham’s esports organization Guild Esports are going through major changes with two key members of staff announcing their departure in less than a month of each other.

Guild Esports exploded onto the scene in June 2020 when they officially launched, backed by former footballer and massive celebrity David Beckham.

They’ve since signed plenty of content creators and entered prominent esports titles like Valorant, Rocket League, Fortnite, and FIFA. They’ve also launched an academy system, hoping to usher in a new wave of talented players.

Now, just over a year on from getting started, they’ve been rocked by losing two major staff members that both had a strong influence within the organization.

Executive chairman Carleton Curtis announced his departure from the esports organization on July 14, and director of brand and content Danny Lopez revealed he was leaving on August 2 — without having a new place of work lined up, no less.

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Guild Esports CEO Kal Hourd told Dexerto: “I am proud of what Guild has achieved since its launch and have enjoyed working with Danny and Carleton over the past year and wish them well.

“Guild’s plans for growth remain unaffected. We have a strategy in place to ramp up the growth of our company and have a brilliant staff of 40 collaboratively working to achieve this.”

While Guild have seen success in esports, including winning multiple events and launching their academy, profitability is still a pipe dream for the company. This is typical of a new start-up, however.

In June 2021, they revealed that they had made a loss of £4.3m before taxes in the previous six months. The aforementioned signings make up for a lot of the expenses of the org, though they have managed to partially offset the damage by entering several lucrative sponsorship deals.

At the time of writing, they have secured a total of £7.5m from sponsors and partners for the next three years. This includes a “multi-million-pound” sponsorship with Subway and a deal with a mystery company that is paying £3.6m over three years.

The jury is out as to what the future looks like for Guild without the presence and efforts of Carleton and Lopez, but if one thing is clear it’s that changes are always to be expected at a young company in a growing industry such as esports.