ORDER Fails to Find Buyer, Moves to Next Phase of Insolvency
Employees were officially let go on Friday, according to administrator.
Australian esports organization ORDER has failed to find a buyer and is moving into the next phase of insolvency, according to what Rodgers Reidy Director David Holton told The Fudge Retort in an email Friday afternoon.
The administrator overseeing ORDER’s insolvency attempted to find a buyer, but ultimately interested parties (of which there were many, according to this Dexerto report), decided not to seal a deal.
With the hope of a buyout in the rear view mirror, Holton said that the next phase is to liquidate any company assets to pay off debt, which is around $200K AUD.
“The Company is likely to now be placed into liquidation at the second meeting of creditors to be held on 16 September,” Holton told us. “The realization of the company’s assets will continue and we will ultimately pay distributions to creditors in accordance with the Australian priority rules noting that employees (and FEG which may fund the employee entitlements) will get paid first.”
Holton also said that, with this new phase, ORDER employees have now been terminated, with Rodgers Reidy making sure that “eligible employee entitlements are paid out by an Australian Federal Government scheme known as the Fair Entitlements Guarantee (FEG).”
Holton added that his firm has “yet to determine” whether contractors who worked with ORDER (such as content creators) have deemed to be employees and will be provided compensation under FEG.
News of ORDER entering into voluntary insolvency surfaced on Aug. 16, but signs of trouble at the Melbourne-based esports organization were made public in early-July when it was revealed that the company laid off more than a dozen employees and shut down its lifestyle apparel brand business, DIS. At the time, ORDER Chairman and Founder Gerard Murphy told us that the volatility of economy and other factors forced the organization to make some hard decisions:
"The recent moves in the capital markets meant that several financing initiatives have been delayed,” Murphy said. “As a result, the Board of DMH had no choice but to take a conservative approach to managing the finances of the organization which resulted in the extremely difficult decision to halt the DIS brand and DIS related activities.”
ORDER is not just some average, run-of-the-mill group of players: It was the top-ranked esports organizations in Australia, with its teams typically dominating almost every major organized esport played in the region. The exit of this organization from the Australian esports scene will likely have a lasting effect on the industry in the months and years ahead.
We will continue to follow this story as it develops.