Svenskeren nuevo jungler de TSM

H2K has worked diligently and professionally to identify and secure a roster of talented players for its League of Legends team. Dennis “Svenskeren” Johnsen is a key piece of the roster that has been assembled for the coming year.

H2K, Svenskeren and his family engaged in long discussions and negotiations that culminated in a deal between the parties. Both agreed, in writing, to execute a contract formalizing that deal. This was a legally binding agreement which H2K relied upon as the basis to stop negotiations with other player who were being considered for the Jungle position. In the midst of executing the final contract, Andy “Reginald” Dinh of TSM contacted Svenskeren and attempted to poach him.

Upon learning of the attempted poach, Richard Wells, CEO of H2K informed Reginald that H2K had a binding agreement with this player. Over several communications, H2K clearly advised TSM that Svenskeren was a critical part of the team structure, and TSM’s illegal and anti-competitive actions would cause serious financial harm to H2K. TSM was indifferent and determined to continue with the poaching—Reginald’s only response to Richard Wells was, “Well just do what you need to do”.

With no other options, H2K asked its counsel to formally notify TSM that their actions constituted tortious interference with H2K’s legally binding employment agreement with the player.

TSM have a well-deserved reputation for abusing their stature in eSports to poach players from well-established teams. They seem to believe that they are entitled to ignore poaching rules and other teams’ contracts in order to fend off competition from smaller franchises. This sort of behavior threatens the competitive balance in League of Legends and eSports generally. H2K would like to see Riot Games more aggressively combat such behavior in the League of Legends.

The claims by H2k are not accurate.
I spoke to Riot every step of the way. According to Riot, there is no agreement in place. Svenskeren did not sign an Loi or any form of agreement. H2k is now threatening to take legal action on TSM, while slandering my company publicly. Whats more disturbing is that H2k is threatening law suits on Svenskeren and harassing his family.
Edit: Amazing also turned us down because he wanted to stay in Europe.
Edit: This is what Sven sent me.

So to clear this up. At no point did I threaten Sven with a law suit. I said that we would take it further and we have. We approached RIOT to clear up the issue as I stated we would in the screenshots that Regi kindly provided... And for clarity the issues that we are pursuing are with regards to TSM's actions, not Sven's.

I took legal advise on the matter because I wasn't sure if the situation was legally binding or not. I was informed that it is indeed legally binding by my lawyers so I passed on that legal information and it's connotations to Sven and Regi. It's very sad that Regi stooped so low as to post a Cherry picked, Isolated part of a private conversation without any context.

The reason Sven's mother is mentioned is because we were talking with her every step of the way. Sven HIMSELF actually requested that everything we talked about and sent was also shared with his mother. Proposing idea that I ever 'harassed' his family is totally inaccurate and dishonest on behalf of Reginald. The only communications I ever had with Sven's mother were incredibly polite emails discussing matters such as how optimal we could make the H2K environment for Sven... and one update phone conversation in which she was very polite and appreciated my call.

We will continue to pursue this matter until it's conclusion. I am very disappointed in Regi for publicly posting about a private legal dispute.

The whole deal with Svenskeren started on November 3rd. At this point, his contract had been expired for three days, since the end of Worlds. I reached out to him because I needed a top tier jungler. I offered him a temporary tryout position which involved playing at IEM San Jose.

Svenskeren was hesitant to take the tryout, since there was a chance that a poor performance at IEM San Jose would hurt his potential offers for the coming season. He was reluctant to join unless he was guaranteed the starter position. Since he was an incredibly prolific free agent, he was already in negotiations with multiple LCS organizations that were willing to give him a starting position, including H2K.

Despite the reluctance, he was still considering my offer for a tryout. He eventually turned it down because H2K was offering a really good deal, and would back out of their offer if he chose to try out for TSM. Svenskeren told me if I wanted him to be able to try out for my team, I needed to convince H2K to still give him a starting position even if he did not get the position on TSM.

Thus, I had a call with Richard (THE CEO of H2K) where I offered to pay him to guarantee Svenskeren the spot on H2K if the tryouts didn’t go well. The call ended with us deciding to spend a day to consider the situation, and to come up with terms we could agree on to allow Svenskeren to try out for TSM while keeping his guaranteed spot on H2K. To clarify, I offered to pay the CEO of H2K to allow Svenskeren to keep a guaranteed spot on the H2K roster while being allowed to try out for my team. Following this, I started to come up with a way to find a win-win situation. The following screenshot is proof that the call happened and we even scheduled a time to go over the details the next day. It is unfortunately illegal to record a Skype conversation without the other party’s consent, and thus I can provide no recording of it.

However, after the call, Richard immediately reached out to Svenskeren to attempt to sign him with an increased offer, completely against the fact that we both agreed to think about the situation and wait.

(If you account for time zone differences, the above conversation occurred approximately an hour after my call with Richard. California is 9 hours behind Denmark)

Richard made an attempt at increasing the offer and stated that he would completely back out of the offer if Svenskeren did not take it immediately. They were essentially handing him an ultimatum; accept our offer now or it’s off the table for good.

Svenskeren proceeded to turn down my tryout offer as a TRYOUT and proceeded to go into further conversations with H2K. It was during this time where although he said he would sign a contract with H2K, he officially did not sign anything.

(As far as I know, this is their “written confirmation”, which a lawyer has confirmed would not hold up as binding)

Meanwhile, I realized that I needed to give him a starting position, otherwise I would lose the chance of getting him period. I talked to my team and we all agreed to give him the starting position. At this point in time, there was and there still is no proof of Svenskeren signing a contract with H2K to our knowledge. I even asked him as shown in the following screenshot:

Svenskeren accepted our terms, but we waited for clearance by Riot before signing him. It was at this point that H2K started to intimidate Svenskeren by stating that he was legally bound to their team.

In addition, H2K sent me a letter threatening to sue me:

However, after realizing that the intimidation tactics did not work on either of us, H2K pulled a total 180 and proceeded to offer Svenskeren a huge signing bonus, despite pulling an ultimatum with him and resorting to intimidation. Additionally, according to Svenskeren, Richard also started to call his parents and siblings to say bad things about me. In response to the statement that “Sven HIMSELF actually requested that everything we talked about and sent was also shared with his mother”, this was meant to be about any contract business that would occur with H2K, and not TSM. The following screenshots show evidence of Svenskeren communicating that he felt harassed, and feeling that H2K stepped outside the bounds of any agreement involving his family:

Following these allegations, I proceeded to contact 3 lawyers, with all parties unanimous that my signing of Svenskeren was completely legitimate. Riot also responded that according to their rules and with the information I provided, they did not consider Svenskeren a signed player, nor do they agree that this is an attempt at poaching or tampering. After getting the clearance from Riot that I was not poaching, I proceeded to sign Svenskeren on November 8th.

Overall, H2K's final offer was greater than mine, but Svenskeren did not feel comfortable signing with someone who would use these kinds of tactics to sign a player. I hope this clears up any confusion concerning this situation. We will proceed to stand behind Svenskeren unless evidence comes to light that he actually signed a contract with H2K.