ESFI World

This past Thursday, North American StarCraft 2 team Reign announced its disbandment after IGN pulled the plug on its sponsorship of the organization. Established on June 15th, 2011 from its predecessor VT Gaming, the team was only eight months old. SLush, KiWiKaKi, giX, Future, Korean players Artist and Inori and newly-signed Axslav are all now left without a team to call home. It’s doubly bad for Axslav, who had just joined the team after having spent much of his StarCraft 2 career with Evil Geniuses.

The IGN sponsorship played a pivotal role in all of Team Reign’s operations. The funding provided money for not only player salaries and travel, but for the monthly rent of the team house as well. The house wasn’t cheap, as monthly rent amounted to about $3,000.

“The disbandment is just as unexpected for us as it may be for our fans,” the announcement read. Not only was it unexpected for the team, but the timing couldn’t have been worse. Artist and Axslav are both qualified to compete in the MLG Winter Arena on February 24th, a weekend that would have surely given the two players and the team time in the spotlight.

A meeting and then...

According to Frank "Mirhi" Fields, Reign’s former owner, he had met with IGN’s core team (which includes IGN E-sports General Manager David Ting) two-and-a-half weeks prior to the team becoming defunct. On the agenda was for Fields to address any concerns that IGN had about the team, which included discussions about Reign’s general direction and content production plans; performance benchmarks were also set and, according to Fields, both parties left the meeting satisfied.

David Ting, IGN E-Sports' General Manager

So what happened? “I do not honestly know why [IGN] had no confidence only two weeks later,” Fields told ESFI’s Brent Ruiz. “I only found out about the impending split on Wednesday and we made the decision to close the team immediately.”

In a separate interview with ESFI World, IGN’s David Ting said that he had been paying the sponsorship in advance of standard payment terms to help Fields get started with the team and to be able to afford payments for the team house. However, things changed when Ting was unable to continue payment on the same plan. "I had to conform to the corporate mandate of paying with a NET 30 term," he explained. "[Fields] had a float issue, and I offered my personal money as a loan to help bridge. For reasons unknown to me, Frank decided to shut the team down."

Fields was unable to provide a detailed response to Ting’s explanation. “Responding to this statement in full is impossible given my hopes of continued employment,” he stated. “Out of respect for my co-workers at the [IGN Pro League], I am unable to comment on the specifics of [David Ting’s comments]. I am sorry for the endless questions that will arise because of it."

Face of the team?

IGN’s expectations for the sponsorship's return-on-investment were much more than based simply on tournament results. Much of it was a matter of branding and which players became the face of the team. Ting said, “The reason why I sponsored Reign was because I love Frank, [Brian “Spades” Francis] and [Jonathan “KiWiKaKi” Garneau]. I bought into their vision that they [would] create a practice environment that would rival Korea, and get a group of players to compete against the best around the world.”

Ting made it clear to ESFI that he believed Spades and KiWiKaKi to be the biggest stars on the team, even if most members of the community would easily place players like Artist, SLush, Inori and certainly the newly-added Axslav in front of Spades and up there with KiWiKaKi. From the beginning though, Ting’s desire to get into the business of team sponsorships came about due to his personal relationship with his two stars, as well as with Fields. 

On January 18th of this year, Brian “Spades” Francis left Team Reign, as the two sides mutually agreed to terminate his contract. Francis spoke of his departure publicly, and the story was featured on the third episode of Reign Bootcamp, with comments from both sides. Ting told ESFI that he had expressed his concern to Fields about losing Spades, and confirmed that Reign management was also considering KiWiKaKi’s status with the team.

One could imagine David Ting’s displeasure when the two players that he wanted to start the team with were on their way out, or in Spades’ case, no longer part of the team.  “[They] were not involved in the project as originally discussed,” Ting said. “And the programs that were produced did not deliver the metrics that I expected.”

From the team’s inception, Spades was its team captain. According to Dawn Moore, Reign’s general manager, Francis “wanted to run a team the way he thought a StarCraft 2 team should run." "We let him, and inevitably, he failed to prove he was a leader,” she said. “When it became clear that [he] was not going to run practices as he told us he wanted, I did my best to try and direct them, but only half the team respects a non-player telling them what to do.” Moore then spoke about something that Jo "Artist" Min Ho, arguably the team’s most successful player, said to her about management. “Artist said to me, ‘the difference between Koreans and Americans is that when a manager says “do this”, Koreans do it, while Americans only might do it.”

Francis’ results during his time on the team were lackluster, at best. Although he announced that he would “probably be on a team soon” after his exit from Reign, more news about the future of the 24-year old’s StarCraft 2 career have yet to surface.

Expectations

After speaking with both parties, it seemed both were left wanting more out of the relationship. Fields expressed his disappointment in IGN and the expectations he had of them as the team’s lead sponsor. “IGN was very inconsistent on its plans for the partnership and its expectations for the team. Financially, things were fine until recently.” Logistically, the fact that Fields is an employee of IGN, the same company that sponsored his team, left him feeling frustrated to boot.

Ting, on the other hand, was let down by the fact that the original concept he had of the team failed to pan out. Video views created by the Reign production team were less than satisfactory, according to him. The team house that would rival those in Korea didn’t come close to getting to that level, though Reign aimed to move more in that direction with the help of Axslav. “He was supposed to be the first of many players that would lead the house in a different direction,” said Reign’s Dawn Moore. “Players who had the interest, work ethic, and respect to treat the house as a place of work and not just an extension of their mother's basement.”

Nick "Axslav" Ranish was signed to the team only a few weeks before it closed shop

Moving forward

Ting offered the following sentiment to Fields: “[He] is a well-respected member of the e-sports community and I understand the frustration that he is currently feeling when his personal passion is shut down. This is a very trying time for him, and the IPL team and I are there for him.”

We probably won’t see another IGN-sponsored team anytime soon - at least, one helmed by David Ting. “It is extremely unlikely that I will sponsor another team in the near future,” he stated. With Reign gone, David Ting and the entire IGN e-sports division will continue to focus their attention on IPL4, which is scheduled to take place in April.

Frank "Mirhi" Fields

Fields will continue his role at IGN as its E-sports Operations Manager for StarCraft 2, where he creates, organizes and manages every IPL StarCraft 2 tournament. While he says he enjoys his job and wants to continue doing it as long as it makes sense to him, he’s also going to replace the time he had in managing Reign with some playing time of his own. He recently tweeted, “Since I am a gamer, I'll be trying to get back up to a semi-pro level at something. Not sure what yet.”

Since I am a gamer, I'll be trying to get back up to a semi-pro level at something. Not sure what yet. SC2, DOTA, LoL, HoN. Maybe GW2...

— Frank Fields (@FFMirhi) February 17, 2012

Though he says he doesn’t have any plans to form a new team currently, he’s not ruling it out in the slightest. “It’ll probably happen again,” he predicted. “I’d need to find the right situation. For now, I need to worry about getting back on my feet financially and mentally.”

As for the team house, Fields is thinking of bringing roommates in to pay the lease off, which ends in October. He and Dawn Moore will stay there until then, and Axslav has also expressed interest in staying and helping pay rent.

Brent Ruiz

Brent Ruiz is the founder and editor-in-chief of ESFI World. Follow him on Twitter at @brentruiz.   » ESFI Profile   » Twitter