TL;DR

Jakob Lund Kristensen, owner of Copenhagen Wolves (CW), neglected to ensure that players had valid and countersigned contracts prior to playing in the EU LCS. Invalid contracts fail to protect both players and organizations and this is a repeated offence for Copenhagen Wolves. They will therefore face a heavier fine ($3,000 USD) than the last penalty.

CONTEXT

In mid-July 2015, LCS officials began an investigation after allegations that Copenhagen Wolves’ players’ contracts had not been properly signed. This investigation showed that Karim “Airwaks” Benghalia and Joey “YoungBuck” Steltenpool did not have valid contracts signed by both parties, technically leaving them legally invalid. All starters are required to have valid, signed contracts in order to participate in the EU LCS.

LCS officials spoke with Kristensen, who admitted to this error, but was able to prove that CW’s contractual obligations had been fulfilled. Although leaving contracts unsigned still put both parties at risk we consider this error heavily mitigated by the fact that Copenhagen Wolves followed all details of the contracts in good faith.

However, this is a second offence for the Copenhagen Wolves as they were previously fined in October 2014 – they will therefore receive a larger penalty than before. Having valid contracts protects both players and the team and is not something that can be neglected by team owners. In 2016, we’ll be revisiting the framework of how teams contract players to ensure that these kinds of oversights are minimized and that team owners are held to an even higher standard of accountability.

RELEVANT RULES

3.2 Roster Requirements

All Starters must have a written contract with the team they are playing for. An LCS starter is only allowed to compete for the one LCS team that he or she has a contract with. To verify that these players are officially under contract, each team must submit the Summary Sheet from the Player Services Agreement (“Summary Sheet”) for each player they wish to designate as under contract.

RULING

Copenhagen Wolves once again has shown negligence by failing to ensure players have counter-signed contracts. Copenhagen Wolves will be fined $3,000 USD.