HandOfBlood achieved in 2024 with his team Eintracht Spandau in League of Legends what he had long wished for. But after the victory at the EMEA Masters, there was a long silence about the German eSports team. Now it is known how it will continue, and the idea reminds of another German team of a Twitch streamer.
What is Eintracht Spandau? In November 2021, the German Twitch streamer HandOfBlood founded Eintracht Spandau, a LoL team that played directly in the German Prime League
. At the beginning, things did not go particularly well, but this year they were able to achieve good success.
Not only did they become the German champions of the Prime League, but they also became champions of the EMEA Masters, which is basically the Champions League in European LoL outside of the top league LEC.
What happens next was unclear for a long time. However, in a recent video, they explain the new direction of the team and it reminds of the German team NNO.
They’re taking the streamer path
What does the future hold for Eintracht Spandau? In a recent YouTube video, Christian Baltes, the co-managing director of the team, and Kevin Westphal, the head of the eSports division of the team, explain how the future of the LoL team will look. They make it clear right from the start that they will not be joining 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 financial success in the three years since the team was founded.
To keep the organization sustainable, they need to reduce costs.
To do this, they want to focus more on reach. They want to shift from a sports focus to an entertainment focus. They aim to focus on players who not only want to work as professionals but also as Twitch streamers or content creators.
They will remain in the Prime League, but the players should be live more often and thus become more approachable
. The players will train less and stream more.
In the end, they announce that the powerhouse of the team, PowerOfEvil, will continue to stay in the team.
The strategy was already used by another German streamer team. The streamer team NNO has long followed a similar strategy. They did not primarily focus on eSports but continued to focus on streaming. However, when NoWay, Broeki, Karni, Agurin, and Tolkin ascended to the first German league, there was a problem.
With their own streams, they had no time for the league, and due to the regulations, they could not combine the streams with eSports. They formed a team of other players and managed the new team behind the scenes.
But ultimately, the project failed. They had too high costs and hardly made any money. The 5 streamers were simply not suited for organizational tasks.
Could Eintracht Spandau manage the shift in focus? Unlike NNO, Eintracht Spandau has a whole organization behind it. They have people who take care of bureaucratic matters, such as contracts or insurance.
How streaming and the focus on content will qualitatively affect gameplay remains to be seen. The fact is that, according to the video, they will invest less time and money in the sports aspect of the team than before. In other European countries, influencers manage LoL teams as well. A Spanish team wants to now snatch a new talent: LoL: Team of a streamer wants to bring a talent from the USA to Europe – Would make history
