Counter-Strike Professional Players Association goes live
Headed by esports veteran Scott "SirScoots" Smith and Astralis player Andreas "Xyp9x" Højsleth, the Counter-Strike Professional Players Association or CSPPA has been announced, with around 90 players having already joined.
The organization has been created alongside the Danish Elite Athletes Association, an organization which acts as a union for sports athletes in Denmark, and will be run by Michael Døi, a legal advisor, and Mads Øland, the CEO of the DEEA.
Seven players comprise the founding board, who will make the decisions on behalf of the players. Two of the players were featured in last year's HLTV Top 20, and all of them are well known over the history of the game. Here are the seven players:
Andreas "Xyp9x" Højsleth
Epitacio "TACO" de Melo
Tarik "tarik" Celik- Jonathan "EliGE" Jablonowski
- Jordan "n0thing" Gilbert
Chris "chrisJ" de Jong
Nathan "NBK-" Schmitt
Per Døi, a new board will be elected, or the current one kept, within the first year of the organization's operation. He says that the CSPPA's main goal is to assist players with legal advice in regards to contracts and to "become the collective voice of the players in CS:GO."
Michael Døi provided this statement:
As any other players’ association, we will work to secure the best possible working conditions for players in CS:GO, while of course taking into account the special nature of the industry. In any sport, it makes sense that players can influence their employment conditions. There is certainly a huge difference in how CS:GO contracts are structured, and there will definitely be players that could benefit from guidance when signing them. Our goal is to represent the players in the best possible way and help the entire scene grow in a positive direction. We see a lot of possibilities for doing that.
For players seeking to be members, the requirement is that you must be a player who is contracted or is actively seeking a contract as a professional player and competes at the "elite level."
