In 2024, HandOfBlood achieved what he had long wanted with his team Eintracht Spandau in League of Legends. But after the victory in the EMEA Masters, things were quiet about the German e-sports team for a while. Now we know what happens next, and the idea is reminiscent of another German team of Twitch streamers.
What is Eintracht Spandau? In November 2021, German Twitch streamer HandOfBlood founded Eintracht Spandau, a LoL team that competed directly in the German Prime League. Things didn’t go particularly well at the beginning, but this year we had good success.
Not only did they become German champions of the Prime League, they also became champions of the EMEA Masters, essentially the Champions League in the European LoL apart from the top league LEC.
What would happen next was unclear for a long time. A current video explains the team’s new path and is reminiscent of the German team NNO.
Everything you need to know about the LoL team Eintracht Spandau – in 4 minutes
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What does the future look like for Eintracht Spandau? In a current YouTube video, Christian Baltes, the team’s co-managing director, and Kevin Westphal, the head of the team’s e-sports division, explain what’s next for the LoL team. They make it clear right at the beginning that you don’t go to the LEC.
They explain that sponsors have stagnated and viewer numbers have not grown satisfactorily: We are in an ecosystem that does not reward sporting success at all. According to the video, there has been no economic success in the three years the team has existed.
In order to keep the company going longer, costs have to be reduced.
To do that, you want to focus more on range. You want to switch from a sporting focus to an entertainment focus. The aim is to focus on players who not only want to work as professionals, but also as Twitch streamers or content creators.
You stay in the Prime League, but the players should be live more often and therefore become more approachable. The players will train less and stream more.
At the end it is announced that the team’s powerhouse, PowerOfEvil, will remain in the team.
Another German streamer team already had the strategy. The streamer team NNO has followed a similar strategy for a long time. The main focus was not on e-sports, but rather on streaming. But when NoWay, Broeki, Karni, Agurin and Tolkin were promoted to the first German league, there was a problem.
Because of your own streams, you didn’t have time for the league and so you founded a team of other players and managed the new team in the background.
But ultimately the project failed. The costs were too high and hardly any money was earned. The 5 streamers were simply not suitable for organizational tasks.
Could Eintracht Spandau manage to change focus? Unlike NNO, Eintracht Spandau has an entire organization behind it. You have people who take care of bureaucratic things like contracts or insurance.
It remains to be seen how streaming and the focus on content will affect the quality of the game. The fact is that, according to the video, less time and money will be invested in the sporting aspect of the team than before. Influencers also manage LoL teams in other European countries. A Spanish team now wants to grab a new talent: LoL: A streamer’s team wants to bring a talent from the USA to Europe – it would make history