Elephant picked up Dota players Somnus and fy for over 4 million

Elephant picked up Dota players Somnus and fy for over 4 million

8. June 2023 by Andrew Williams

According to a co-owner of Elephant, picking up Somnus and fy made the team cost $4 million! Despite the heavy pricetag the lineup was very unprofitable and apparently not worth the money despite featuring high calibers like Lu “Somnus` M” Yao and Zhang “Paparazi” Chengjun.

Star-studded roster fails to deliver

It seems like the investment of over RMB 30 million (~$4.2 million) that Elephant spent on the players did not get returned, as the revenue they brought in was only $811,000. Elephant had introduced the team in October 2020 at the time. They managed to win several Chinese tournaments but were not exactly successful outside China.

They managed to qualify for The International 2021 and got out of groups but fell short at place 13th-16th, going home with $600,000.

The Elephant lineup consisted of these players:

  • Zhang “Paparazi” Chengjun (Eurus)Lu “Somnus” Yao
  • Zhou “Yang” Haiyang
  • Xu “fy” Linsen
  • Ru “RedPanda” Zhihao
  • Xie “Super” Junhao

The team was originally a joint project between the 4AM organisation and Elephant. But due to disagreements over plans that arose on 15 November, 4AM pulled out of the project. The team then changed its name to Elephant on 16 November.

The story of Elephant

China’s superteam Elephant is now defunct. Four of its players have been released from any contractual ties with the organisation, while Super will return to Royal Never Give Up. Elephant was formed in late 2020 with much drama surrounding their entry into the Dota 2 scene. The roster was born because the players started to voice their wish to play together and did everything to achieve this goal, the result were issues with their old teams and disputes over contracts and how to get the players out of there. When the dust settled and Elephant was ready to compete, the team failed to live up to expectations.

China’s superteam failed to qualify for any of the major tournaments, although they did quite well in tournaments outside of the Dota Pro Circuit. They secured their ticket to TI10 via regional qualifiers, but the much-needed redemption failed to materialise. Elephant barely made it past the group stage, finishing second to last in their group. They were then knocked out of the TI10 playoffs by Evil Geniuses in the first round of the lower group. After their exit and the missing results in other international events Elephant stopped their Dota2 division and decided to leave the scene for the time being.