Leave it to Danish businessmen to run esports ventures into the ground. Just ask anyone from Parken Challenger Championship.

There is the odd success story here and there, such as one of the most successful esports dynasties of all time, but the sport is not letting us forget a certain Mr Gundersen.

News broke this week of Astralis shuffling to make two surprise moves on short notice. With their contracts ending during or shortly after the Major, and negotiations between the players and the team having hit a brick wall, Astralis opted to bench the two players early.

A bewildering move to some, but it actually makes perfect sense when you consider a more important player, Staehr, also has a contract ending at the end of the year. As it seems the trio isn’t interested in re-signing their contracts, the alternative is that all three leave for free immediately after the Major, leaving Astralis with two players and zero VRS.

In a desperate bid to save some points, they’ve therefore looked to two absolute titans of the game, who we’re sure they have genuine belief in for the future.

Welcome siuhy and cmtry.

The former, recently a free agent out of Liquid, and the latter, coming in on loan to rifle, is one of the most desperate scrambles to form a team we’ve seen in a long time, and it’s not looking good.

It begs the question: how did contract negotiations between Denmark’s most prestigious organisation and the three players of that same nationality break down so dramatically?

The answer is that this isn’t Jonas Gundersen’s first rodeo.

To be fair to the guy, when he bought the team, he inherited an organisation already several million in the red, and his subsequent restructuring wasn’t going to make that any better on short notice. Add to it the fallout of the IEM Cologne stickers (a sentence we’re likely to use a lot in the coming months), and it hasn’t exactly been a favourable hand to play.

On the other hand… we used to be NIP fans.

It’s a right old shame as well, given that Astralis just took their first LAN trophy since going international, and were looking pretty good for potentially challenging for a somewhat deeper run at the Major. Now, we’ll instead see Staehr stumble through a Major on a squad that might be worse than his Rio 2022 Sprout team, only to then leave for a better team after the Major.

SPUNJ apparently even said Staehr already has a “well-known” team lined up. Here’s hoping he’s replacing iM once and for all.