The PEA's first planned competition was a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) league, which was scheduled to begin in January 2017 with a minimum $1 million prize pool.

[7] Katz also served as the vice president of global marketing for the Championship Gaming Series, a televised esports league that folded in 2008.

[8][9][10] The PEA's first planned competition was a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) league, originally scheduled to begin in January 2017 with a minimum $1 million prize pool in its first year.

[12] According to Smith, the players were told by league commissioner Jason Katz that the uneven structure was designed to avoid stalemates, and that the two votes belonging to the PEA should be considered "unbiased".

[14][15][16] In a subsequent statement, Dinh accused Gares of "mis[leading] and manipulat[ing]" other TSM players into signing a letter they "had not read and did not understand".

[15][16] The other four players on TSM also denied being manipulated by Gares,[17][18] saying in a statement that "some of us may have had more information than others or been more involved in this endeavor, but we all understood what we were doing when we gave the okay to put our names on the letter".

[16] TSM's CS:GO roster ultimately disbanded in January 2017, with the organization citing its deteriorating relationship with its remaining players and the latter's desire to continue playing with Gares.

[15] WESA in turn said it had "politely declined" an offer from the PEA that amounted to "terminating the [North American] division of the ESL Pro League".