Volkan Arslan · @VolkayOnline
8th Aug 2018 from TwitLonger
The struggles on the EU CSGO market as an agent
Good evening everybody,
Today I wanna talk about the current situation of my agency and my struggles on the EU market. I started this whole thing in february 2017 by helping just a few players to find new orgs to play for and getting them sponsors for their streams (if they delivered numbers). After a while more and more players reached out to me to get help wether it was checking out contracts, contacting sponsors or just finding players for them to play with. In November we reached the point where I had around 35-40 players sitting there waiting for me to find them homes. The problem here was: the European market is limited in orgs paying proper salary (which I totally understand). So I started having free agents who were with me for over half a year without having an org to play for. At that point I started criticizing myself for not being able to find everyone a home. With every successful transfer I got done, there were 10 players hitting me up about how I prefer helping "player xyz" instead of helping them. What they did not understand from the beginning is, that it wasn't really my fault. I create portfolios for every player that signs up with me and send them to the orgs I work with. Most of these orgs are sadly bigger orgs who would not consider those players, because they don't have the reach they are looking for. A lot of orgs are also scared of the feedback they would get by signing those kind of players (even tho skillwise some of those "not so big players" are better than some of their players). Besides that a big focus is on hubs like the Faceit pro league. Meanwhile there is a gap of already experienced players who are yet not in FPL (which I also understand) but are tired of playing the Faceit Pro League Challenger series. Those players are mostly around 18-23 years old and wasting valuable time by playing faceit pugs with their friends because they prefer playing in an environment, that they feel more comfortable in. I hear a lot of players complaining about getting baited, having communication issues or raging people in FPLC which sadly sucks but is nothing, faceit itself is responsible of (Mikey and his guys are doing an outstanding job with their hubs). Long story short, they end up wasting their time by playing pugs all day.
On the other side you have players who played for a big org before earning a salary that is more than enough but get dropped at some point. Those kind of players are struggling to accept offers from teams on the same skill level who are only able to pay 1/6 of the salary they earned before. This whole getting dropped situation is just one of the results of the fast paced business that we work at.
Exporting EU players to MDL teams in NA also get really hard lately due to securing working visas for some of the players, since some of the MDL orgs do not have such a big infrastructure such as bigger orgs who got huge legal teams behind them. If you take a look at MDL in general it is scary to see how many teams are just mixed teams of free agents trying to find a new home.
So here I am, having talented, experienced and all the kind of players that I named above, but struggling to find them homes. But there's more :-D
As an agent, I surely live off this whole circus that I told you about. A lot of people ask me how I make money off it so let me give you a short version:
Off every sponsor deal I get for a player, I get percentage of the money the player earns. Off every (wish it would be every LOL) transfer I get done, the org that signs a player needs to pay percentage of the players annual salary to the agency as an agency fee. Sadly in lower tiers (for example a player earns 1000 USD/month) the orgs usually struggle to pay the fee so they either tell me they are not able to pay or they try to convince the player to get stuff done without their agent (which doesn't work because they signed a deal). In most of those cases I'm just playing the good guy by letting them go without taking the fee. LUCKILY and I can't say this enough, I had the pleasure to work on some bigger transfers which even allowed me to keep this going.
Bullshit involved in contracts:
There's always a lot of bullshit involved in contracts such as low/no salary once you're benched. Besides that a lot of orgs don't sign players as employees but state in the contracts that players are considered as selfemployed and have to look out for their own health insurance, have to register their taxes themselves etc. Now imagine being a 18 years old player in Europe: Do you read the contract? Nope, you only check out the duration of your contract and your salary. Do you sign the contract? Yes, cause you don't really care about the rest. Do you research everything regarding health insurance and tax? Nope you don't cause you're 18 years old and have no knowledge in that sector. Another fucked up thing are orgs who do not allow any agent to see the contract once it got signed. This basically means, you got benched, but can't contact an agent to help you getting bought out of your contract.
Those are just a few of the problems I experienced so far. While this sounds like I'm getting upset, I just wanna make sure players I don't work with also have an eye on that!
Until then I just hope you guys managed to see this point of view and understand what I'm dealing with :D
I hope y'all will have a great day, see you soon!
Volkan