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League/Tournament Brands:
- Valve issued a statement saying that teams and players registering for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Majors must disclose any conflicts of interest.
- This softens a previous statement about conflicts of interest, citing a need to gather more data following community feedback.
- The $5M+ USD ESL Pro Tour and $4.25M BLAST Premier series are both coming in 2020.
After making a statement in September regarding conflicts of interest between teams and leagues in the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) esports scene, publisher Valve has issued a new statement clarifying its stance for 2020’s Major tournaments.
Valve previously stated, “In order to participate in Majors, we require that players, teams, and tournament operators confirm that they have no existing conflicts of interest, or if they do, disclose them and work to resolve them.”
However, yesterday’s statement softens that mandate. It notes that Valve received feedback suggesting that leagues co-owned by organizers and teams alike do not present a new or significant conflict of interest, given their previous existence. Valve wrote that it wants to collect more information and have more public discussion before instituting any final rules changes.
“While we can point to clear cases where relationships between teams and TOs have generated distrust in the community, we agree that our near-term priority should be collecting more data and requiring more transparency so that conflicts of interest can be properly evaluated,” reads the statement.
“Therefore, for 2020, teams and players registering for the Majors will be required to publicly disclose their business relationships with other participants and/or the tournament organizer, so that public conversations can be had about the value that leagues and other entanglements offer versus the risk that they pose,” it continues. “Failure to disclose any business with the TO or other participants will likely result in disqualification.”
Valve’s original September statement came in the wake of changing tides in the CS:GO scene. The $5M+ ESL Pro Tour—a collaboration between sister companies ESL and DreamHack—was announced amidst a report that participating teams would be barred from taking part in some competing events, although ESL has denied this.
Furthermore, RFRSH Entertainment announced its own $4.25M BLAST Premier series for 2020, succeeding the current BLAST Pro Series. RFRSH previously owned CS:GO team Astralis and League of Legends team Origen and would have been affected by Valve’s previous ruling, but RFRSH split the teams off into a separate company this past summer.
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