Former BoostGate players say two thirds of their TCL salaries are unpaid

Two players who left BoostGate Esports this summer have gone public about their pay. In posts on X, the support Centu and the AD carry Mean said that the roster the Turkish club fielded in the TCL, the Turkish Championship League of League of Legends, is still waiting for most of the salaries it was promised. Sheep Esports reported the posts on Monday, August 10, 2026, and updated its report on Friday, August 14.

Centu put a share on it. According to Sheep Esports, he wrote that every member of the previous roster was still waiting for two thirds of the salaries the team had agreed. He added that he had not wanted the matter to become public, but saw no other way out. He also wrote that it was sad for players in a major league to have to wonder whether they would be paid at all, the outlet reported.

Neither BoostGate nor the league had commented when Sheep Esports updated its report on August 14. The outlet said it had contacted the organization and would update the article if it answered.

Sheep Esports, August 10, 2026, and its update of August 14: the posts of Centu and Mean on X, and its report of January 6 on the league's announcement.

What the two players wrote

The two posts came from players who had worn the BoostGate shirt for different stretches of the same season. Sheep Esports gives their roles and the time each spent with the club.

Centu, a Greek player, played support, the role that protects the team's main damage dealer and controls vision on the map. According to Sheep Esports, he wrote that the players had tried to settle everything in private before speaking out, and he ended his post by saying he hoped the matter could still be resolved.

Mean, the AD carry, the player who deals most of a team's sustained damage from range, quoted Centu's post and backed it. "Everyone is still waiting to receive their salaries," he wrote, as relayed by Sheep Esports. He added that the wages in question were not the kind of extravagant pay people might imagine.

He closed on a hope rather than a demand. "I still believe it's not too late to do the right thing," he wrote.

Neither player gave an amount in the posts reported by the outlet.

No answer from the club or the league

The dispute rests, for now, on the players' word. Sheep Esports reports no ruling and cites no rule, and neither the club nor the TCL has stated a position.

The posts are those of players who say they are owed money, and the club has not answered them. Sheep Esports said it had contacted BoostGate and would add its answer if one came. Until the club or the league speaks, the claims are public statements by former players, not established facts.

A league that keeps losing teams

The posts land in a league that has had a difficult year. Sheep Esports tied them to the departures of several organizations from the TCL.

On January 6, 2026, the league announced on social media that three teams would not return for the new season, Sheep Esports reported that day: Beşiktaş Esports, which had played in the league since the Winter 2015 split; Papara SuperMassive, which joined in 2016 and represented the league at the World Championship in 2018 and 2020; and ULF Esports, which had bought its place a year earlier and played only one season. Beşiktaş said at the time that its presence in the league was not sustainable for now, and that its departure was not final: it would like to return if the Turkish scene came to match its goals.

The three were not minor names. Beşiktaş won the title in its first split and was one of the six teams that qualified for the first Mid-Season Invitational, Riot's international event in the middle of the year, and only Dark Passage had been in the league longer, according to Sheep Esports. The outlet calls Papara SuperMassive the region's most successful organization. ULF Esports finished third twice in its single season and qualified for the EMEA Masters; it was ending its League of Legends division while its Valorant team had qualified for VCT EMEA, the outlet wrote.

Then, on June 19, MISA Esports, the three-time reigning champion, announced that it was disbanding its League of Legends section and would not play the Summer 2026 split, Sheep Esports reported. The organization, founded in 2023, left as the holder of the title, won that spring in a final against PCIFIC Esports. In its statement, as the outlet relays it, MISA said it had worked to support the growth of the TCL and to move the Turkish scene forward.

MISA also played abroad this year. At the winter edition of the EMEA Masters, MISA led Solary two games to none in the lower-bracket final and lost the series; at the spring edition, Galions beat it 3-0 in the quarterfinals, which ended its season, according to Sheep Esports. The outlet's report on BoostGate also lists S2G Esports among the organizations that have left the league during the 2026 season.

In its June article, Sheep Esports described a league facing growing difficulties, with several organizations leaving because they did not find the environment sustainable for teams. Its list of organizations that have left since 2023 also includes Istanbul Wildcats.

Where the TCL sits in Europe's circuit

The TCL is one of the European regional leagues, usually called ERLs, the national and regional competitions of League of Legends that Riot Games groups in one circuit for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Riot Games listed 13 of them for 2026 on November 27, 2025, the Turkish Championship League among them, beside the French LFL and the Prime League of the German-speaking countries. The same page gave preliminary split dates that each league may adjust: a Winter Split from January 7 to March 8, a Spring Split from March 23 to June 7 and a Summer Split from June 26 to September 17. It said nothing about contracts or salaries for ERL teams. The one common rule it changed concerned rosters: the requirement that every ERL team field at least two locally trained players, a rule that had applied across the circuit, was dropped for 2026, and each organizer may now set its own guidelines.

The league once had a bigger stage. Sheep Esports recalls that, through 2022, the TCL champion went to the Play-ins of the World Championship, and that the league was integrated into the ERL circuit in 2023. Its champion now qualifies for the EMEA Masters, the tournament that brings together the best teams of the regional leagues. Riot's calendar for 2026 sets three editions: March 9 to 15, June 8 to 25, and a summer edition from September 21 to October 19.

Payment trouble is not limited to Turkey. In the same report, Sheep Esports notes that Esprit Shonen, in the LFL, which the outlet calls the most prosperous of the ERLs, played this split with a roster that received no player salaries, after payment delays that have since been resolved.

What another regional league has done

No decision of the TCL on BoostGate has been reported. Another league of the same circuit has shown, this year, what a regional league can do when a team does not meet its commitments to its players.

On March 4, 2026, the Prime League revoked the official team status of 6GPA, which played in its second division, Prime League 2, for breaching that rule, Sheep Esports reported on March 27. The organizer had asked the team for a payment plan on February 18 and followed up on February 26 without an answer. The slot went back to the players and staff, who kept competing under the name SixSeven while they looked for a new organization.

That decision belongs to the Prime League and its own rulebook. Each regional league writes its own rules, and nothing in the Prime League's rulebook applies to the TCL. The BoostGate players' posts, as Sheep Esports reported them, cite no TCL rule and ask for no sanction. Whether the TCL has a rule of its own on commitments to players is not stated in the outlet's report, and the league had not spoken by the time of the August 14 update.

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