The credit crunch may well prove to be fatal for the eSports industry as now AMD announces to stop their team sponsorships.

Last year's WCG Samsung European Championship, or 'SEC', was a huge event, taking up 8,000 sqm in CeBIT's Hall 22 in Hannover, Germany. It was a large entertainment program with artists, gaming areas, a case mod exhibition, and information booths from the WCG Partners presented to the visitors.

More than 250 players from 30 different countries were fighting for an overall prize money of $100,000 as the world's best players and teams were competing in games such as WarCraft III and Counter-Strike.

Later Sang Hong confirmed on myMYM.com that the SEC won't take place during CeBIT though the WCG is looking for a new location.

Now the German online news portal Spiegel.de reports as they quote AMD representative Friederike Gonzalez, that "due to the economical situation, all larger eSport sponsorships will come to an end. That includes sponsorships for the World Cyber Games as well as for the German team SK Gaming."

SK Gaming manager Alexander Müller says that the organisation knew since a while about those issue and "we are looking for new partners".

When myMYM.com contacted SK Gaming's other manager Andreas Thorstensson to ask if the team may suffer from the latest announcement of their head sponsor AMD he answered: "SK won't suffer".

AMD made headlines already in December when it announced it would no longer continue sponsoring mTw and confirmed it will cut 1 100 jobs and impose temporary pay cuts to respond to "tough business conditions".

Furthermore Spiegel.de contacted mTw's publicrelations manager Sebastian Conrad who says that the the Warcraft 3 scene is pushed back to a level where it has been years ago, since now good players don't  earn "1 000 till 2 000 Euros [a month]... but 500 till 600 Euros."

In the same article Intel announced that they do not plan to end their long time cooperation with the biggest league operator in the world ESL before the CeBIT which will take place in early March - though they plan to review their financial involvement within eSports after the exhibition. The ESL did already a 35 000 Eurp prize money cut in the German EPS.

UPDATE 13:35 CET: GotFrag has spoken with the ESL that claim the situation is not presented entirely correct by Spiegel.de. ESL will issue a statement rectifying the truth in the story at a later time.