Update Following widespread upset over the sponsorship agreement, the LEC announced that it has terminated its partnership with Neom.

"As a company and as a league, we know the importance of recognizing when mistakes are made and correcting them quickly. While we remain steadfast in our commitment to all players and fans around the world, including those living in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, upon further reflection, the LEC has ended its partnership with Neom effective immediately," said Riot's EMEA esports director Alberto Guerrero said in a statement.

"We were too hasty to solidify this partnership in order to expand the esports ecosystem. We have failed ourselves in this instance, and we are committed to reviewing our internal structure to ensure that this does not happen again."

Original [Neom is a planned community under development by Saudi Arabia, a so-called "accelerator of human progress." It will be the home and workplace for more than one million citizens from around the world," its website states.

Yesterday, Riot Games announced that the League of Legends European Championship League (known as the LEC) has signed Neom as its "main partner" for the 2020 summer season. On the same day, CS:GO's professional league, Blast Premier, announced its own "commitment to Neom to foster the growth of esports in Saudi Arabia and to build a dynamic and innovative esports community, demonstrating Neom's ambition to become a regional hub for esports," the Neom partnership was revealed.

As reported by Kotaku, the response to both deals from the League of Legends and Counter-Strike communities has been generally negative.

Despite the lip service Neom's marketing pays to diversity, Saudi Arabia is run by a notoriously repressive regime. Forbes recently named Saudi Arabia as one of the top "most dangerous places for LGBTQ travelers," noting that homosexuality is punishable by flogging and in some cases the death penalty and that simply expressing support for gay rights is a crime. Earlier this week, Reuters reported that a blogger was sentenced to nearly a year in prison and fined for simply stating that "everyone, including homosexuals, has rights and should be free to practice them."

Saudi law is also deeply sexist. According to a 2019 report by The Independent, reforms that ostensibly granted women the right to, for example, drive a car or travel without the permission of a male companion were not as far-reaching as presented, and women's rights activists continue to face government repression.

Saudi Arabia's ruling family has demonstrated a willingness to crush dissent even beyond its borders; in 2018, journalist Jamal Khashoggi was at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, when Saudi government agents murdered by the Saudi government.

It is, in other words, a rather bleak situation behind the facade, and LEC anchors and fans were quick to call out Riot for the hypocrisy of publicly embracing the LGBTQ community while simultaneously supporting a government that violently opposes its very existence .

Some Riot employees also expressed displeasure with the move.

The Blast Premier is not as high-profile a league as the LEC, but the reaction was much the same.

Neither Riot nor Blast Premier have officially commented on the backlash at this time. I reached out to both for more information and asked if the deal might be reconsidered in light of the reaction to them.