Behind The Scenes Of The Latest Astralis Roster Moves
Behind The Scenes Of The Latest Astralis Roster Moves
Players move teams all the time but when it involves the historic rivalry between Astralis and Heroic there will always be fireworks. Were they justified this time?
On the 24th November 2023 Astralis unveiled two new signings in the form of Jakob "jabbi" Nygaard and Martin "stavn" Lund. It was the latest chapter in the organisation’s quest to restore their Counter-Strike roster to its former glory and came at a significant cost during a time when most esports companies are looking to curb spending. However as with all things relating to Astralis things aren’t as simple as they first appear. That much is obvious to anyone who has followed the history of their interactions with Heroic, the former home of their two new acquisitions.
For fans the transfer was initially viewed as baffling as only the previous month they had benched their iconic, long-standing captain Casper "cadiaN" Møller due to “differing visions for the future.” That future obviously didn’t include him but it most certainly included the two players now at Astralis. News of the transfer came with speculation, rumours and leaks about what had gone on behind the scenes. Naturally both organisations have tried in their own way to control the narrative. When announcing the temporary benching of the two players ahead of their move Heroic posted that both of them had made “future plans with Astralis.”
In Heroic’s video interview and tribute to the now departed Møller he laid the blame squarely at the feet of Lund. “I was very surprised when I talked with stavn” He said. “He wanted to move things in a different direction, and he didn't know if he should be benched. He said he didn't feel the same joy playing the game or playing with me that he used to, and he thought I was being very harsh when correcting mistakes. I could see some of the parts he was saying, but with the relationship and open communication that we had, I was surprised things weren't brought to my attention earlier. He had a serious tone when he called me, and I felt that this was something he was sad about.”
Lund, who had said in an October post on x.com that “truth always prevails” followed it with a lengthy joint statement that says pretty much what you would expect, essentially that Heroic are lying, that they both had good intentions towards the team but never committed to re-signing their contracts and that they were also lying about the future plans with Astralis. The observant will of course notice the denials are largely linked to things Heroic never claimed. They didn’t state that the players had re-signed. They didn’t state that the players had signed contracts with Astralis. The statement attempts to distract you from the specificity of the language used via the specificity of the timeline provided. It’s an old trick but it’s one that often works. Which isn’t to say Heroic themselves wouldn’t embellish statements where Astralis is concerned either.
So who to believe? What actually happened? Well, before answering these questions let’s set the table with some essential context about the history between both these organisations. The Astralis and Heroic rivalry is like nothing anyone has ever seen before in esports. They began life as sister teams, both majority owned by the RFRSH group which was the brainchild of Nikolaj Nyholm.
Nyholm, now the Chairman of Astralis, saw a way to have controlling interests in multiple teams and obfuscate that reality by putting players at the helm in exchange for a portion of the equity. The mutual ownership was denied by RFRSH initially before pivoting towards a public admission and stated they had never deceived anyone about the ownership. Falling afoul of conflict of interest rules enforced by the World Esports Association (WESA) and a potential pushback from the Danish government the decision was taken to sell the Heroic brand. RFRSH, having gone on to become a tournament operator and no longer a media rights company, also sold their stake of Astralis to a new company founded by Nyholm who in turn handed in his resignation.
By the end of 2018 a buyer was found for Heroic in the form of Seranades Global Incorporated, a company registered in the British Virgin islands tax haven. A little over two years later and the brand would change hands again, this time being purchased by the Norwegian Omaken Sports Group. Through both sales the team had continued to operate in Denmark, recruiting Danish players and promoting themselves to the small but esports savvy Danish fanbase. Despite that Astralis had remained the biggest organisation in the country propelled into the mainstream by unprecedented success in CS:GO and expansion into League of Legends. They had many admirers online too. In 2020 their Counter-Strike team was the second most watched team in the world only after Ukraine’s juggernaut Na’Vi. They were, for the most part, without rival domestically having watched another Danish brand, North, burn through FC Copenhagen’s investment money and die inside of four years.
But Astralis had lost some of that sparkle. By 2020 their financials were hit by the pandemic prompting requests for paycuts and they were also in conflict with the legendary team that had made their name. Reports portrayed the org as Dickensian taskmasters who due to a combination of contractual obligations to tournaments and having recently floated on the Danish Nasdaq could not let their players take a well earned break. By 2021 that formerly imperious core and coach were being dismantled and Astralis were left with the unenviable task of trying to replace the irreplaceable not once but four times over.
Heroic by contrast were starting to find consistency and had established themselves as a top five team in the world, even winning ESL’s thirteenth Pro League. In the court of public opinion though these results were tainted as the team had ended 2020 embroiled in a scandal relating to their coach Nicolai "HUNDEN" Petersen who was banned for twelve months after using an in-game exploit on two occasions, one of which happened to be against Astralis. Nyholm himself had publicly intimated that he believed the players were aware of their coaches actions during the game and invited them to Astralis headquarters to deny it to his face.
Instead of keeping a low profile on his return Petersen somehow managed to get suspended again, this time for sharing what was described as Heroic’s stratbook with a rival team that would later be revealed to be Astralis.
He himself wasn’t helping anyone move on from the cheating incident either spending most of the year publicly going out of his way to incriminate his former colleagues via a series of statements and media appearances. This culminated in it being revealed that Heroic management had made players sign a newly created NDA with a clause specifically crafted to preclude them from discussing the cheating incident. Heroic played PR games of their own publishing a video that had their players tearfully speak about how tough the allegations had been.
Petersen’s determination to take down Heroic seemed strange given that they had not only continued to employ him while he served his suspension but even purchased billboard advertising space to announce his return.
However, behind the scenes a legal battle between the two organisations was underway with allegations that Petersen had essentially been working for Astralis during his time with Heroic and that he shared documents and information Heroic would not want rival teams knowing. As part of those proceedings Petersen had his electronic devices seized and messages between him and Astralis Director of Sports, Kasper Hvidt were preserved. This publication was able to obtain and publish sections of those messages as part of our “Hunden Files” release that showed Petersen had essentially agreed to join Astralis in principle as early as March 2021. The fallout from those messages led to both Petersen and Hvidt being terminated from their positions at Astralis and Astralis were fined $100,000 by ESL for violating the rules of their partnership.
None of the drama had altered the trajectories of both teams when it came to performance on the server. Astralis had rolled the dice on some young talent and even bought back star player Nicolai "dev1ce" Reedtz but were still finding it impossible to get back to title winning ways. Heroic, while certainly not coming close to eclipsing Astralis’s legacy any time soon, were always good value to have a deep run and maybe even claim second place earning themselves a reputation as perennial chokers. And while Astralis would have killed for a few second places as they rebuilt their line-up they certainly would never accept being second place when it came to popularity in their native country.
As one source I interviewed for this article put it: “Internally Astralis believe that really only Denmark matters, that they can look like idiots internationally as long as they control the narrative in Denmark. And, of course, Heroic by comparison is weak in Denmark.”
As such all business between Astralis and Heroic must be viewed through that lens. The optimal move in their eyes will always be one that not only strengthens themselves but simultaneously weakens their hated rivals.
So let’s get to the part of the puzzle that people are missing in all of this and that is Heroic’s former Head of Performance Kasper Straube Hansen. The aforementioned departure of Kasper Hvidt paved the way for him to be hired as a replacement. After all, he was very highly regarded in esports circles and was Danish. He was also known to be a huge part of Heroic’s success. In Møller’s own words he was essentially the glue that held the team together:
“We got him as a team manager and physiotherapist to make sure they could pay him the amount he needed and he could travel with us” he explained in the above video interview. “He quickly created a good bond with the players and the organization and became the connection between tournament organizers, the organization, and the team.”
Astralis knew that they could offer him a substantially improved contract and so they approached him and they agreed on the move. The original plan was to have Straube Hansen serve out his contract with Heroic and then join Astralis in October but Heroic, having been bitten in the past by the situation with their coach, didn’t trust that he could be impartial and he was instead cleared to join immediately. The official announcement was made in early July and once again Astralis had got their man, one who just so happened to be from Heroic.
A source familiar with Astralis’s business dealings told us that the hire was made explicitly with the intent to destabilise Heroic. “People don’t know how political Astralis are in Denmark” they explained. “They keep track of what everyone is doing and definitely knew how the players, especially Stavn, felt about Kasper. Taking him away from them was a way to make the team implode.”
That doesn’t mean that they had expected to land the players themselves though. Another source close to the Heroic players provided a more down to Earth rationale for why the players left.
“I can’t say for sure if Astralis hired him [Kasper Straube Hansen] with the intent of having the [Heroic] players follow but he certainly recommended them to Astralis after getting there. He had a strong bond with the players, especially Stavn. He had gone through a lot in his personal life not just playing and Kasper had really helped him with his mental health. I’m almost 100% sure once Kasper left Stavn was always going to try and follow him. That’s what started all the shit.”
They also added “I mean, it’s Astralis. If you’re Danish and they come calling then you don’t say no.”
Whether Astralis hired Heroic’s Head of Performance with a view to leveraging his relationship with the Heroic players or not doesn’t alter the cascading chain of events that ultimately led to the roster move. What each source did confirm when asked was that the players had kept in touch with him after he joined Astralis. They had wanted to make amends after some contention over his departure as they had only been given about an hours notice that he was going to leave prior to it being public. Lund in particular had a special affinity with Straube Hansen who had offered significant emotional support after the player lost his brother. Lund was reportedly upset enough with Heroic management over his departure that he complained to them about it wanting to know why they didn’t do more to keep him.
It’s reasonable to assume this relationship was most likely the channel through which Astralis sounded out the possibility of the players joining. While we don’t know exactly when that happened and certainly can’t take Lund’s statement at face value what we can say based on the actions that took place is that if the plan all along was for them both to join Astralis there wouldn’t be any reason to lead an uprising against the in-game leader. It would just be far easier to try and leverage a move away without that headache. We can conclude then that at some point the players would have genuinely made a go of things had they got their way and received no offer from Astralis. Lund denies he was the instigator of this by saying that “we did not initiate a push to replace cadiaN” but then in the following paragraph effectively admits that he in fact did.
There were tensions brewing in the aftermath of Straube Hansen’s departure. This was explained to me as being due to the fact that Møller was now doing more and more in the absence of a performance coach including doing “feedback sessions” in a style the two players didn’t enjoy. There were also concerns that Møller had too much power in the team as Straube Hansen was the person who would facilitate communication between players and help resolve any conflicts. Based on all the information collected here Astralis were likely just taking advantage of a situation they became aware of due to the proximity of their new staff member and the Heroic players. It does seem absurd of Lund to try and absolve himself of responsibility when his own statement says “he was ready to take a step back from the team himself in order to resolve the situation.”
The previous source close to the Heroic players laid out in explicit detail what had happened in the build up to the removal of Casper "cadiaN" Møller, explaining that Lund had put Heroic in a “me or him” situation over the in-game leader. This doesn’t contradict Lund’s statement but naturally he had omitted some of the gorier details.
“Stavn didn’t want to play with Cadian anymore and was actively getting support from the others. Jabbi didn’t take much persuading but at first the others didn’t agree and wanted everyone to work it out. The org did nearly two weeks of intense mediation trying to solve the situation arguing that Cadian should have a chance to address their criticism and have a chance to improve. Both of them made it clear that they refused to play with Cadian no matter what and that Heroic must choose between them.”
“While the org waited Stavn and Jabbi started to lobby internally and turn the rest of the players against Cadian” they continued. “In my opinion they actively manipulated the rest of the team to ditch Cadian. The team then said to the org that they were all in agreement [that Cadian had to go.]”
“The org didn’t really want to cut Cadian” they conclude “but at that point what can they do? Stavn had said he would do anything to make it work without Cadian, even promising to AWP and be the leader if needed. So Cadian gets kicked and then Stavn and Jabbi turn around and say “actually we don’t want to do these things anymore and we’d like to join Astralis” so Heroic got fucked and so did the rest of the team. I doubt any of them would have pushed out Cadian if they knew Jabbi and Stavn weren’t going to stay.”
The source familiar with Heroic’s business dealings added the detail that “Heroic had thought about the possibility of keeping Cadian and getting a new line-up for him, most likely ENCE. That would have been the much more expensive option so they decided against it and let Cadian go instead.”
Now, in the interests of balance I’ll add that I don’t much care about the almost gossipy details of roster moves. If you read those quotes and are shocked then you must be new to esports. You could swap out names and it could be about almost any major roster move in the past twenty years. Esports is very different to its mainstream bigger brother in the sense that the amount of power players can wield when it comes to roster moves is far greater. Star players get what they want, they get who they want and when they no longer want to be under contract they get out almost entirely unscathed all the while being overpaid relative to the value they generate. It’s still a very juvenile industry in that sense and so the nature of what happened doesn’t surprise me nor does it strike me as particularly newsworthy in and of itself. However, given the nature of the relationship between the two warring organisations it’s actually important to include all the context, especially given the assumptions people will make where Astralis are concerned. Irrespective of any initial meddling it’s important for people to know that this move was driven by the players and, at least in one case, had some deeply personal reasons that will likely be forgotten in any community dogpiling. There was also another aspect to the ultimatums and that was the thought process that if the players got benched they could ultimately leave anyway as Heroic would be forced to sell.
The source familiar with Astralis’s business dealings explained that “they were absolutely on standby to table a low ball bid if the players were no longer wanted by Heroic.” That is indeed what ended up happening. Sources familiar with the details of the transfer stated that the initial enquiry was “4 million Danish Krone” an amount in the region of $600,000 for the pair. However Heroic’s public posting about the benching had generated interest from other organisations and bids came in above the amount Astralis had floated.
“Internally Heroic management had said they were going to charge Astralis an ‘asshole tax’ for the players and they came up with the amount for them of around $2 million, or about 14 million Danish Krone. The players actually ended up helping Heroic here because they refused to open a dialogue with any other organisations and instead were talking about getting lawyers to review their contracts. Heroic didn’t budge and in the end Astralis paid the money. Heroic see this as a big win especially for players unproven in CS2.”
So Astralis are the bad guys again right? Well, no. There was also an additional factor driving the decision from Heroic to sell that they conveniently left out of the narrative. Money. If you’ve followed the stories around Heroic you will know that for a long time they were really in trouble financially. Back in March Pley.gg published a Heroic statement to its shareholders which read:
"In this regard, reference is made to the extraordinary general meeting of the Company, on 30 January 2023, where the Company's former CEO, Joachim Haraldsen, made account for the Company's need for additional capital, and that the Company will need NOK 80 million to sustain its business until the end of 2025, of which, a minimum of NOK 10 million will be needed before summer 2023"
That effectively meant they needed $7.5 million by the middle of 2023 just to survive. By the end of March reports were coming through that after they had released new stock at a reduced cost in order to raise $1 million they were going to able to keep the proverbial lights on.
May came and it was reported that a Norwegian Company “owned by a regulated EU investment fund” called Krow Bidco AS would be buying 75% of the shares in the company for $5.26 million. The move was facilitated by the Norwegian based ULTI Agency, which people will recall were the intermediaries in the Cloud9 deal for Gambit Esports Russian squad. Within that context think about what it says that Heroic can sell players at $2 million? The new ownership would certainly be off to a great financial start, especially as their subsequent reinvestment would be a fraction of that amount. Also think about being a player and reading these types of headlines. Is it any great shock that players might feel that joining Astralis represents a more secure future?
On the subject of headlines there has been one that is also playing out during this move and it’s not one the Heroic organisation will be happy about. On December 4th Freelance reporter Corentin Phalip published an article on Medium entitled “Public Ties Between Heroic, 1xbet, Paradise Papers.” In it he details a chain of connections between disgraced betting site 1xbet, who also happen to sponsor HLTV and ESL, and the board members of Krow Bidco. It’s a tangled web that due to the lack of transparency around business ownership ultimately proves nothing but it does make you wonder a few things. For instance, just how is it that an agency founded by the same now deceased founder of 1xbet has employees on the Heroic board?
Multiple sources have confirmed to me in private that this new ownership has raised significant concerns with tournament operators, most notably ESL, who are not only investigating to find conflicts of interest but demanded Heroic provide documentation and be fully transparent with them. ESL have also recently added more robust conflict of interest rules into their rulebook. It’s unlikely that anything incriminating is ever going to be found on paper assuming there even is anything to find in the first place. That would kind of defeat the point. However, it’s worth noting that Heroic’s new ownership could find themselves sanctioned should anything untoward ever be proven and multiple people are certainly looking. It’s not established if the players were aware of this but if they were then you’d be hard pushed to blame them for wanting to leave. Certainly there’s enough awareness out there about this topic that several sources suggested it was a factor in Heroic missing out on some of their transfer targets for replacements to those who joined Astralis.
A final detail in all of this. The source who is familiar with Heroic’s business dealings told me that the new owners were utterly sick and tired of the war with Astralis and “getting their ass kicked” just because they had a Danish line-up. While they may appear publicly aggrieved at losing two of their players only a month after irreparably breaking their relationship with a loyal in-game leader they were always going to sell Lund and Nygaard as soon as they voiced a desire to leave. It presented them with an opportunity about something not just related to financial gain.
“As soon as they knew they were selling Jabbi and Stavn they made the decision to go international. That is the norm now anyway but they hope it will also stop the war for Denmark. It’s been nonstop drama and they can move on now.”
With the money coming from the Astralis roster move they had hoped to acquire the core of Finnish organisation ENCE, themselves already an international roster. This move was disrupted by the Saudi Arabian organisation Falcons swooping in and gazumping Heroic by taking away Alvaro "SunPayus" Garcia and Pavle "Maden" Bošković to complete their own roster. Heroic still acquired the ENCE coach Eetu "sAw" Saha, Israeli star Guy "NertZ" Iluz and Macedonian Damjan "kyxsan" Stoilkovski. This will be the first time they’ve had an international line-up since 2018. It remains to be seen if this will be enough to end a bitter rivalry but Heroic certainly continue to fan the flames. After their departed players made a losing debut against Virtus Pro in the Betboom Dacha tournament their social media manager posted a Spongebob Squarepants meme that read “no refunds.” In any other context most likely a harmless joke but knowing the details it is a very public spiking of the football.
So there it is. Depending on your vantage point the transfer saga is either Machiavellian five-dimensional chess, emotional players wanting to work with someone they enjoy a good relationship with, a smart financial move or an intelligent jumping from a ship sailing into precarious waters. Or all of the above. The thing to always remember is that when it comes to Heroic and Astralis it’s never just business.
All sources used in this article spoke under the condition of anonymity and that their identities were protected fearing professional reprisals should they be identified.
Great read, thanks for your continued work
Thank you for introducing me to the word 'gazumping'. I wish I had reason to use it.