"We are planning with two or three players"

fragster: How do you like the system changes of WC3L and NGL ONE?

Min-Sik 'reis' Ko: I definitely approve the new system, because there are several advantages for a team, especially in organisation. To have a WC3-Team means to have enormous costs, especially for Clans such as SK, mTw and MYM. We all have four or five top players who earn a decent salary. To invest this money every month into team leagues isn't profitable at all if you look at the prize money or media values these leagues come along with. It's not worth the investment to have a top team solely for participating in WC3L and NGL ONE. If you look at SK for example: It's only Lyn who is invited to most of the tournaments. Earlier the others were invited numerous times as well, but since their performances aren't that good any more, the demand for having them in solo tournaments decreased. That's why we basically have them only for the team leagues and that doesn't pay off.

Can we interpret this statement as a decision to have less players in your team in the next year?

reis: There is the rumour that we could do that and it seems like we willy-nilly will do so. One has to look at things economically and how the next year will be like. From now we already can see the developments that will take place: Teams will break up, just as mTw does these days. One reason for this of course is that clans have already talked to the leagues about the upcoming changes and thus have already started to arrange for them.

Does this mean that you will not play with the current lineup next year?

reis: This will be the consequence, yes.

Can you already say how many players there will be in SK.wc3?

reis: We are planning with two or three players, but this isn't decided yet. I have to sit down and talk in detail to the management. For now, we focus on the current event.

What about lowering the player's salaries to decrease the costs?

reis: It would be hard to explain the players why we decreased their salaries. But I think that if all the teams fire half of their players, the market of clanless players will become very large and the players just realize how much they basically can earn. I would argue that what they earn right now is pretty much, but this won't go on in January. The players have to realize that they can't earn this much any more. But now you cannot say to a player "from now on you are getting less, because next month there will be many free agents anyway that would cost much less than you now". A player would always think that he still deserves the same money since he is still in a very good team.

Couldn't you just hire "cheaper" players?

reis: Basically yes, clans such as SK wouldn't have a problem to have two super stars and three low-budget-players besides them. But you have to take travel costs into account. Sending a five-man-team into another country means having costs that exceed the prize money you can get by far.

The players of your current team already play together for a long time now. Isn't it hard to split them up?

reis: Let's see it like that: Just because they won't play for the same team anymore doesn't mean that they won't see or like each other anymore. It's a fact that we are playing together for quite some time now, but the players are professionals and they know that in the end everyone has to look for himself. Of course we will try to stay together as a team but there will be so many changes in the next months, I simply don't see how we can do that.

Next year WC3L starts its 15th season, NGL ONE begins for the sixth time. Have the salaries grown that high that it doesn't pay off to play in team leagues any longer or have the leagues lost their prestige?

reis: First of all you have to see that within two years another team came up that suddenly increased the salaries from "nearly nothing" to an amount ten times higher. That was the beginning. WC3-players are, next to Starcraft-players, the eSportsmen who come off best financially. One WC3 top player earns as much as a whole CS team. That's why it became extremely hard to have a top WC3 team. With one top player you won't achieve much in WC3L because he can just win one point. The WC3L series was on a very good way, but one or two years ago, there was a prize money stagnation.

But since you only keep a small part of it, the prize money shouldn't bother you too much, should it?

reis: Of course we appreciate a league that has a high amount of prize money because our players benefit from it and therefore we do as well. For sure you can say that we as a team shouldn't care too much about it. But if you keep in mind what amount of money we have to invest in a team league you realize that it's not profitable for us.

As a team manager, did you lose some of your importance due to the league changes?

reis: For sure, a manager of a WC3L team has always been the one to determine lineups and to instruct the players when to play. As a matter of fact, I am a WC3L manager, but I also care for the players as such. I don't just say where and why they have to play and that's it. We also try to bring the players to market because if we don't manage to do that, having such players doesn't make sense. Since I joined SK I got more and more involved into the economic part of the business and I don't focus solely on being the team manager anymore.

Who of the SK players would you consider to be the best at the moment?

reis: Lyn, no doubt about that... and I would suggest, ReiGn comes after him at the moment. It's often said the feeling of the top players on a match day is very important. But if you look at Lyn you can see that this isn't always the case. But about the others you can say that they sometimes show a very good game and sometimes a weaker one.

What's the reason for the three NGL ONE finalists to decide to share the prize money equally among each other?

reis: Participating in WC3 team leagues means enormous costs and so the three managements thought about what it would cost to send a team to Berlin. A flight from Korea to Germany is about 700 to 800 Euro, including hotel costs you can say that trip costs you round about 3.000 Euro. These are sums that no prize money can level up. It was important for the managements not to have too high costs with these finals. So we agreed not to tell the players before in order to prevent others from saying we manipulated the outcome of the finals. We feared that the players could think "let's lose two matches on saturday, so we can have a free sunday". This is what a part of the community might think, but I do believe that we have three teams here with such big rivalries between each other that the prestige of winning is more than enough for a real competition. For SK it's always important to win a title anyway.

But where is the advantage for the management of a clan to share the prize money equally?

reis: If we had four teams here, the fourth would get very little prize money for having made an investment of enormous travel costs, which wouldn't have paid off.

Let's assume a clan gets 10% of the prize money its players earn, he makes now about 500 USD. If he becomes fourth, he gets 100 USD with the original prize money system. There is no significant difference, is there?

reis: There is an agreement that the prize money is being shared and with this money the clans pay their travel costs.

And the players agreed to this?

reis: The players didn't know about it. One could ask if a player participated at all if he knew that he wouldn't get lots of money. But in my opinion a player who has a contract with SK hast to play if the clan wants him to. You must not forget that the players get very nice salaries so they can't simply choose whether they'd like to play or not. Considering that, one can once demand that a player plays for "nothing".

But isn't it mean to tell the players that they won't get the full prize money which is reduced by travel costs just after a tournament?

reis: Of course it's the best if everyone knows everything before. But on the other hand this is something the players don't have to care about much. For them it's important to play their best and not to think about how much they would win if they succeed. I expect all of them to give a 100 %, regardless if there is any prize money.

But in fact it seems like it is important to them because otherwise you could have told them before.

reis: I know my players and I know that they start to carp a little. But in the end the result is the same. The discussions about it wouldn't be worth the time spending on them.

Thank you for the interview.

The interview was made by Roman 'TruthBear' Lammers and Simon 'Rudi' Wondracek.