Team Dignitas has added an EU League of Legends team – picked up from SK Gaming Prime – with an aim to qualify for the League of Legends Championship Series (LCS).
Manager Michael “ODEE” O’Dell (pictured) told me the news in an interview for PCR, following the team’s announcement of TP-LINK as a new sponsor.
“I’ve just got some of the contracts – we’re signing a Challenger team in Europe,” he said. “So that gives us options. I’ve no idea what we’d actually do if we qualified for LCS because I’m not allowed to have two LCS teams – so we’d have to sell one of them. And then it would be a choice of: where do I go?”
If the EU Team Dignitas team did qualify for LCS, this would mean there would be two Dignitas squads involved in the LCS – one in NA and one in EU. As ODEE says one would have to be sold and change its name – much like Curse became Team Liquid and Curse Academy (previously Curse’s second team) became Gravity.
Team Dignitas’ EU team roster consists of the following:
- Martin ‘Wunderwear’ Hansen
- Ram ‘Brokenshard’ Djemal
- Chres ‘Sencux’ Laurson
- Andy ‘CrazyCaps’ Walda
- Niklas ‘Zytan’ Lakeniemi
- Frederik ‘Phake’ Knudsen (team manager)
- John ‘Rnglol’ Chrichton (coach)
Team Dignitas did have an EU squad before picking up NA team Rock Solid in 2011 which went on to become a strong team consisting of Scarra, Imaqtpie and more.
“We decided to continue our support of the European scene and we’re ecstatic that we are now present in the Challenger Series as well as the LoL Championship Series in two different regions,” said Team Dignitas in a statement on its website.
“We are very confident that this line-up is able to get great results in the Challenger Series and qualify for the LCS in the Summer Split.”
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.
