DeKay: ESL is up to signing 4 year contracts with league participants
ESL wants teams to commit to four-year deals for the ESL Pro League, though its terms remain the same in spite of Valve's recent blog post addressing CS:GO exclusivity in September, according to multiple sources.
ESL will host a summit later this month that includes multiple prominent Counter-Strike organizations in an attempt to sign them to what ESL is calling the “Lanxess Agreement.” The need to lock down teams for future ESL Pro League seasons comes as a result of new information about the unannounced “B Site” league that is set to begin in March.
In multiple documents sent to DBLTAP, the length of the proposed agreement is four years. Multiple sources have indicated the ESL Pro League term sheet still restricts teams from playing in leagues longer than 14 days in duration, just like it did when some of them were published by Dexerto in September. Those same sources have also indicated that ESL has yet to formally present Valve with the circuit concept or its associated terms at this time, which ESL denies.
Two weeks after the September Dexerto report, Valve published a blog post titled "Keeping Things Competitive" reinforcing the publisher's stance on exclusivity and shared ownership.
It's also unclear if the current ESL Pro League agreement would violate Valve's position, though it uses terms that would restrict the length of events or leagues in which teams would be allowed to play. The terms also limit the number of days team can participate in a tournament per calendar year at a total of 60, not counting Minors, Majors, or ESL Pro League. For reference, Evil Geniuses, as one example, participated in offline tournaments spanning 73 days in 2019.
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