Astralis Launched Talent Development Initiative

Danish organization Astralis presented its own development program for young players. The project was named Astralis Talent.

Anders Hørsholt, CEO:

- We have invested significantly in creating the optimal conditions for professional esports players and we aim to constantly progress as an organization, as teams and as individuals. By introducing “Astralis Talent”, we invite local talent to be a part of our set-up and culture with the ambition to integrate young players into a healthy, competitive environment, introducing them to the life of a true professional.  

- Astralis Talent is an investment in the future as a possible recruitment platform for our A teams, as well as inhouse training for all players. It is a way for us to secure an even better connection to the local ecosystem and over time, we hope to elevate players into our A teams. This will not happen overnight, though, and we are going to work with the set-up and fine tune the processes over the coming months.

- Over time, the Astralis Talent set-up will enable the A-players to stay competitive when not playing for the A team, while letting a selected group of ambitious youngsters take full advantage of being a part of a top professional organization, competing together with far more experienced players, says Hørsholt. 

The new platform will be run by multi-gaming sports director Kasper Hvidt and former Danish commentator Dennis Wang, who will also help Danny "zonic" Sorensen with the main lineup of Astralis.

Kasper Hvidt, Director of Sports:

- Ever since we started, we have had discussions around how to implement talent development into our overall strategy without compromising in other areas. We finally feel, we have the resources and facilities and we have gained a lot of experience, which we obviously did not have when starting out.  

- Our new A team coaches in League of Legends have brought a lot of experience and ideas and together with zonic, performance manager Lars Robl and the three new talent coaches, we will have an extremely strong group around the teams.  

- The Astralis Talent set-up is a talent education programme with full access to Astralis Group’s facilities and organization, aimed at integrating the talents into the performance culture of Astralis. For a start, we will most likely have 1-2 players on each team who are older and more experienced, but we aim to work mainly with 14/15-20 years old players. We will include their parents to the degree needed, and we will insist the players continue with school and education.  

- In year one, we will have a total of 3 teams in League of Legends. In 2021, the A team and the Talent team will be working out of the Copenhagen HQ, while the Academy team will still be working and playing in the Spanish second division. In Counter-Strike, both the A team and talents will be working and playing out of Copenhagen and the talent team will compete in relevant regional tournaments.

- It is a move for the future, and it will take time for us to implement the full set-up. Initially, we consider these separate rosters from the A-teams and it will not affect the A team roster size in Counter-Strike. However, over time, it is a clear ambition to fully integrate Astralis Talent into the overall performance and player development strategy, Hvidt explains.

Talent teams and rosters in both League of Legends and Counter-Strike will be finalized by early January at the latest, Hvidt comments.

News and updates about Astralis Talent can be found on Astralis.gg and the Astralis Social Media Channels.