UK-based esports organisation Guild Esports have today announced their Guild CSGO women’s team, marking the org’s entry into Counter-Strike.
The Guild CSGO women’s team is as follows:
- Kaia ‘KiKi’ Holmen (Norway, and team captain)
- Marita ‘Minnie’ Sørensen (Norway)
- Thea ‘Pullox’ Evensen (Norway)
- Linnea ‘Nea’ Claesson (Sweden)
- Anna ‘Ann4’ Laurinoviča (Latvia)
All five players have signed one-year contracts with the option of extending for an additional year.
The Guild CSGO women’s team is currently in London at the Sky Guild Gaming Centre, Guild’s state-of-the-art Shoreditch HQ, where they will compete in tournaments together.
The five players are an existing team and have extensive experience competing together. KiKi, Minnie and Pullox will continue to compete for Norway’s national CSGO team in international tournaments.
This is Guild’s second all female team, complementing a similar roster for Valorant launched in 2021, the Valorant Guild X team. Guild says this team have been a competitive success since launching, with Guild X notably winning the VCT Game Changer EMEA Series 3 in October 2022. The new CSGO team will compete under the name ‘Guild’.
The Guild CSGO women’s team joins Guild’s existing teams competing in FIFA, Fortnite, Rocket League and Valorant. The announcement also comes as G2 and FaZe announced their own women’s CSGO teams too.
Where will the Guild CSGO women’s team compete?
The team will kick off their Guild careers by competing in the ESL Impact Circuit, a women-only CSGO League with a combined annual prize pool of $500,000.
The tournament was created to provide a competitive environment for the top women’s CSGO teams as part of ESL’s ‘#GGFORALL’ inclusion and female empowerment campaign, announced in late 2021.
Guild will additionally compete in the ESEA Open, hosted by third-party matchmaker and anti-cheat software developer ESEA.
The team is targeting promotion from ESEA’s Open Division to the Intermediate Division by the end of the year.
Guild’s CSGO team captain KiKi said:
“We intend to compete at the highest levels of Counter-Strike and Guild is the perfect place to achieve this.”
KiKi, Guild CSGO women’s team
“With leading facilities, high-quality coaching staff and a state-of-the-art headquarters, Guild gives us the opportunity to learn and grow as a team in a supportive environment.
“It’s not just the facilities and coaching – Guild’s long-term commitment to supporting women in esports reassures us that we will be a close cultural fit. We’re excited to bring Guild into CSGO for the first time and hope to make the whole company proud.”
Why Guild Esports have moved into CSGO and why now
Guild says they are leaning on a ‘high-powered all-women team’ as part of their strategy to ‘encourage greater female participation in esports amid growing interest from brand owners, young fans and players’.
In a press release, Guild said that Counter-Strike’s audience numbers continue to climb: CSGO esports tournaments accumulated 450m hours watched in 2022, an increase of 8.8% on 2021 according to Esports Charts.
“Guild believes its entry into CSGO will contribute to the growth of its owned audience and open multiple new revenue streams in the long term,” Guild said in a press release.
Jasmine Skee, CEO of Guild Esports, commented on signing the Guild CSGO women’s team: “This International Women’s Day, we’re delighted to launch a high-flying, all-female team to spearhead our entry into the CSGO arena.
“With female participation rapidly growing in many other competitive sports such as football and rugby, we feel this is the right time for us to recruit top talent for CSGO.
“It will enable Guild to grow its audience, reach new demographics and continue to provide high-level opportunities for women in the esports space.
“The team members have experience competing together at the highest levels of competitive CSGO and will be further inspired by the success of Valorant Guild X. We’re looking forward to working with them and celebrating their competitive success.”
Related article: 7 takeaways from the recent Guild Esports annual results
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.
