ESL responds to player criticism over January start for 2017 UK Premiership

ESL UK’s recently promoted product manager for its Premiership league, Will Attwood, has written a Twitlonger in response to criticism from a student player.
Richard Froom, jungler for Enclave Gaming, originally tweeted stating that the 2017 Spring Premiership is ‘a joke’ for starting in January. In 2016, the Premier

ESL announcing the split is starting in January is a joke. It’s as though they don’t know the busiest time of the year for the player base.

— Richard Froom (@RichardFroom) 23 December 2016

He later went on to explain that ‘the majority of the “lower end” players are students and will have issues’ playing in the qualifiers and the first games of the split, due to exams.
Richard told Esports News UK: “There are a lot of students in the UK scene. I myself am currently doing my masters in Chemistry and have three exams in January starting on the 11th. As a result I’ve had to step down from my role as jungler for Enclave Gaming to give them the best chance of qualifying (for the time being at least).
“If you look at the top tier players, there are students there like J3T, Skudzy, Synygy and Nyx to name a few. I’m not sure about what other university policies are, but most unis do their exam periods in mid-January. The Enclave Academy team has 4/5 players as students and I know some of them are having issues with time commitment.”
While Richard is staying put with Enclave, he admitted that not being able to play in the Prem is ‘a kick in the teeth’.
UK jungler Serge “Skudzy” Huleani also tweeted the following:

mfw i hope i can be back in uk scene in time for next split and esl gets announced for january pic.twitter.com/R7qvPCrQvz

— Serge (@SkudzyEU) December 23, 2016

ESL UK’s Will Attwood responded promptly to the criticism.

Hey @RichardFroom, I’m the new Product Manager for The Premiership for this coming season so I thought i’d (cont) https://t.co/NfzajGHYrT

— Will Bear (@FridgecakeBear) December 24, 2016

Will said: “It isn’t our intention to leave anyone out. We want to give everyone the opportunity to try and qualify for the Premiership but with scheduling, we’re always going to hit someone’s busy period.
“Due to timings next year we’ve decided to start the LoL and CSGO Premierships earlier than normal with the hope of fitting in a lot more content for all of our titles as well as giving us time to try a few new ideas around the Premiership season.
“Hopefully, you and many of the other students who want to get involved with The Premiership will still be able to this year.
“In the future [we will announce qualifiers and the schedule] a few months ahead of game days, but due to some unfortunate circumstances, it’s only going to be a few weeks for this first season.”
In other news, Merry Christmas everyone. This article is being posted late on Christmas Eve (no rest for the wicked, huh), and everyone at ENUK wishes you all a great festive season!

Dom Sacco

Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.

As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.