The team “Eintracht Spandau” from HandOfBlood celebrated a great success in League of Legends in April 2024: They won the European Championship in LoL. However, this success could not be maintained financially. They had to adapt and are now paying a high price in 2025.
That was the situation in 2024: After a few rather mediocre years that visibly frustrated HandOfBlood, Eintracht Spandau went “All-In” in 2024 and invested in a professional infrastructure to optimally support their LoL team in Berlin. They spent a lot of money on a staff to create optimal conditions.
In addition, they brought in established professional players like Tristan “PowerOfEvil” Schrage into the team and poached strong talents from the competition.
This resulted in the long-awaited success: In April 2024, Eintracht Spandau became the European Champion and celebrated the success exuberantly in Berlin.
HandOfBlood itself portrayed a comical figure as president with the megalomaniac “President Knabe” , but they took sporting success seriously and did everything for it.
Eintracht Spandau becomes a content team, places 34-year-old in the bot lane
That was the harsh awakening: But after 2024, they drew a sobering conclusion: The sporting success was ultimately worth nothing. The prize money of €75,000 could not cover the expenses. In its current form, the project could not be sustained.
Eintracht Spandau came to the same realization as the NNO Twitch streamers’ team: Sponsors are hardly or not at all interested in sporting success. Funders prefer to invest in influencers and reach rather than in eSports.
So, Eintracht Spandau made some compromises. They cut back on infrastructure expenses and stated that they are now a “content team” that trains less than before and relies more on players who are actually at the end of their sporting careers and want to make the transition to content creation.
As a visible figurehead of this shift, they brought in Twitch streamer Daniel “Broeki” Broekmann as ADC, who had previously worked as a content creator for Spandau. The man is now 34 years old and claims that he was the best ADC in the league 10 years ago, but today he is the worst (via YouTube).
The team of HandOfBlood loses against a “supermarket” team
This is now the result: Even though they still have a star in the team with PowerOfEvil and are well-staffed in other positions, Eintracht Spandau has trained significantly less than in previous years, and this is immediately noticeable in their sporting success.
They have now finished the season in the Prime League in last place in Group B, with only 4 points from 4 games, clearly missing the playoffs.
Somehow they had probably imagined everything differently at Eintracht Spandau. In the end, the season came down to a match against the “Hangry Knights,” a team that was sponsored by the supermarket Kaufland. But that match also ended in a 0:2 loss.
The season in the Prime League was won by BIG, the big rival in Berlin.
For the new season, the team has now set itself the goal of playing more SoloQ to compensate for the missing scrimmages.
Funny videos instead of sporting success
Are there also positive sides? The situation with the “content team” is now reflected in the fact that Broekmann may not shine in the lane as he once did, but he creates hilariously funny videos for Eintracht Spandau. In his latest work “Dream Job Gamer,” Broeki shows his everyday life:
- he is teased by teammates for his age
- he drowns his frustration in alcohol
- he eats Pringles for lunch while popping antidepressants
- he hits a punching bag like crazy
- he is told by his girlfriend that she does not need a loser as a boyfriend, after all, she defeated Faker
Eintracht Spandau must respond to difficult situation
What’s behind it: Ultimately, it is the logical and expected result of the austerity course. Things could have certainly gone a little better for Eintracht Spandau, and not many videos have really emerged for a “content team,” but the most important thing was probably to reduce costs first.
Especially in the economically tense situation and in the current slump in eSports, they probably had to pull the emergency brake.
The extremely stressed HandOfBlood cannot keep many projects of his company Instinct3 running alone; he needs support from people like Broekmann on the content front, who has a knack for it and shows a lot of talent. But any “LEC fantasies” that some Eintracht fans had after the European Championship have disappeared.
What comes as an unfortunate development that could not have been foreseen: The German Prime League now has competition from the previously insignificant regional league NCL, in which among other things the biggest German streamer NoWay plays: We now know what and whom German viewers of LoL really watch on Twitch
