Franchise founded by former MYM CEO picks up first team

The former boss of one of esports’ most controversial franchises has signed the first team to his new organization.

German organization STARK announced the signing of Finnish Dota 2 team 4 Anchors + Sea Captain (4ASC) on Monday, alongside six FIFA players. The team, formed in September last year, has put together solid results in Europe and has been seeking support since its founding. They’ve finally found a match.

“From the organisations that we have been in contact with, STARK is definitely the organisation I’ve had the most faith in,” Matti “Laged” Parkkila, the 4ASC manager, said. “They’re actually the first one to contact me with an offer as well, almost a year ago. I feel like it’s essential for a team to be able to talk honestly with their organisation, even when things aren’t going well – and that’s what we’ve been able to do for a long time already.”

Having that faith may be important considering the history of the people behind their new organization.

The STARK team is part of STARK eSports, an agency founded by former Meet Your Makers CEO Khaled Naim in Aug. 2015. The team is headed by Dennis Nirtl, who worked with Naim at Meet Your Makers when the pair helped revive the brand in 2009 after its previous ownership went bankrupt. Naim eventually became Meet Your Makers CEO in 2012, after urging his friend Jürgen Rolf Ehrhard to buy the team.

Naim served as head of that team during the “big sorry” fiasco, where a team manager threatened a player with evicting his mother if he insisted on leaving the team. He wasn’t the man who threatened Wolski, but he talked the player through his contract issues with some veiled threats. That wasn’t the only controversy surrounding the team, as a history of missed payments dating back years continued that year. Naim was fired from his position as CEO midway through 2014 after the team’s ownership discovered Naim had been reading the ownership’s private emails.

Of course, whether that has any bearing on the team’s future remains to be seen. STARK eSports will certainly try to put that past behind them.

Photo via STARK/Facebook

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