CEO of Team SoloMid Andy Dinh has been fined $5,000 by the League of Legends Championship Series for his comments towards Cloud9 support Philippe “Vulcan” Laflamme, according to Travis Gafford on his show Hotline League.
“I can say now that I reached out to Riot who indeed confirmed that he did get fined $5,000 for conduct unbecoming,” he disclosed during the broadcast. Daily Esports has since confirmed the fine with Riot.
Gafford revealed in early February that LCS team owners had been in talks with Riot Games to adjust the import rule. Each team can have two players from outside regions on their starting rosters with one slot for their Academy teams.
Dinh was one of the team owners who actively advocated for the import changes on social media. However, North American players in the LCS voiced their support of keeping the import ruling as is. This sparked an intense conversation on both Twitter and Reddit between team owners and fans. Most comments were lighthearted, but Dinh took things a step further with his comment to Vulcan.
Vulcan posed on Twitter that team owners should buy rosters in the desired countries instead of importing them to NA. Dinh responded: “Ignorant tweet. If every LCS team left the LCS- you’ll be out of a job buddy and probably be paid minimum.” This tweet is what Dinh is allegedly being fined for.
Dinh’s comments spark a meme on social media
Vulcan was quick to respond to Dinh, asking if he meant that he would be working at McDonald’s. This quickly sparked a meme within the League of Legends community. 100 Thieves’ mid-laner Tanner “Damonte” Damonte added on, saying that he was cherishing every win he got until he was making minimum. Team Liquid’s support Jo “CoreJJ” Yong-in got into the mix as well, posing an event between “Team Imports” and “Team McDonald’s” with players from the top four teams.
Dinh apologized for his comments towards Vulcan and clarified what exactly he meant.
“Spoke to Vulcan and apologized for my tweet. I wanted to clarify that I meant LCS minimum(75k) and will post something longer to explain my thoughts. Glad that we talked it through and he didn’t take it personally. I’ll be more thoughtful moving forward and learn from this.”
However, it was too late to stop the memes; fans had already made TSM images with the McDonald’s logo. Despite the apology, the League of Legends community is keeping the joke alive.
