In the team’s press release, they stressed a desire to create an organization that provides a “stable environment,” as well as one that emphasizes transparency. Regarding the latter, they made two things clear:
- Our players are allowed to openly discuss all monetary transactions they receive from us (including salary, sticker distribution, prize money and stream revenue). We won’t disclose their income, but we do accept and encourage them to discuss it openly if they are comfortable with it.
- The players are co-owners of the company behind Astralis. We believe that the players are an integral part of the growth and without them there would be no us. As a consequence all of the players are shareholders in the company.
In an interview conducted with Astralis, Xyp9x openly revealed their salaries being $9,000 a month, though they received offers as high as $10,000 a month, excluding bonuses. According to devve, the player’s motivations for forming Astralis were beyond just the money.
“Internally in the team we agreed, when parting ways with Team SoloMid, that we wanted something new,” devve said. “Owning a part of the brand makes us motivated to do better as players, since that directly affects the value of our new company.”
Astralis is partnered with Sunstone Capital, a life science and technology venture capital, and is angel invested by Tommy Ahlers, a Danish entrepreneur.
Astralis CSGO roster
- Rene “cajunb” Borg
- Finn “karrigan” Andersen
- Nicolaj “devve” Reedtz
- Peter “dupreeh” Rasmussen
- Andreas “Xyp9x” Højsleth
We're proud to announce that TQM becomes @astralisgg!
Read more: https://t.co/N4PF2mPSsD pic.twitter.com/fOLcD7nAmb
— Astralis Counter-Strike (@AstralisCS) January 19, 2016
The team most recently competed in SL i-League StarSeries CS:GO Finals. They made it through the group stage, sweeping ex-Titan, but they were eliminated by Natus Vincere during the playoffs and finished in fifth-sixth.
They finished in the Top 8 at DreamHack Cluj-Napoca 2015, earning their seed at the upcoming Major at MLG Columbus, which is set to take place on March 29 to April 3.
