The encyclopedia · Advertising & PR · Marketing decision · 2025
Honda ended six years with Team Liquid after a player posted an atomic-bomb GIF
Rainbow Six player Lucas Dias posted a Hiroshima mushroom-cloud GIF after losing. Honda, sponsor since 2019, cut the tie; the team fined him four months' pay.
Honda · Team Liquid · 2025-05
What happened
Honda had sponsored Team Liquid's Rainbow Six Siege roster since 2019, one of the longer-running brand partnerships in esports. In May 2025, at the RELOAD 2025 event, Brazilian player Lucas 'DiasLucasBr' Dias lost to Japan's CAG Osaka — and marked the moment with an atomic-bomb mushroom-cloud GIF taken from BBC footage of the Hiroshima bombing.
The clip went viral within hours. Honda moved fast: it announced the immediate termination of its six-year partnership, calling the conduct 'incompatible with Honda corporate values and unacceptable.' Team Liquid's co-CEO Victor Goosens apologised and confirmed the split; the player was fined the equivalent of four months of salary, donated to charity, with the RELOAD prize money ($12,000) donated too.
The decision cost Honda the reach it had built with a team it had backed since 2019, but it signalled a hard rule for esports sponsorships: a player's public act is the brand's risk, and the exit must be faster than the backlash. The case became a reference point for how quickly a sponsorship dies in esports.
Why it happened
- A six-year esports sponsorship is an investment in the team's public image; one player's act redefined that image in an afternoon.
- Honda had no time to wait for an internal review — the GIF was already circulating as a story about the brand, so it cut the tie first and asked questions after.
- The punishment fell on the player (four months' wages) while the organisation kept its sponsors' trust by acting decisively — the opposite of who normally pays.
The lesson
A sponsorship is a reputation lease with one clause: what the talent does in public is your problem. The sponsor that cannot react in hours is the sponsor whose brand becomes part of the story.
Aftermath
Team Liquid kept its other sponsors and continued its Rainbow Six programme with a new roster. The episode is now cited in esports sponsorship guides as the standard for termination clauses around player conduct.
Sources
- Esports.gg: Honda no longer Team Liquid sponsor after a player posted a GIF
- Hotspawn: Honda terminates Team Liquid sponsorship after player posts atomic bomb GIF
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