James Banks, the consultant of CS2's Bad News Eagles, exclusively talked with Players about the roster move to the Guild organisation and his role in the team.
«I’m so happy and proud that we decided to wait, turn down other offers and choose Guild as our new home.
To think when I joined Bad News Eagles it was from doing an interview at the Antwerp Major with rigoN and just learning about their journey. It was impressive that 5 players and a coach had done what they had but they certainly needed more help, it was becoming too much for them to be able to focus on doing their best in the server with a lot going on outside of it.
So I spoke with them and they agreed to take me as their manager. At this time I didn’t know how much managers did or really how much time and effort this would all take…remember I was still a talent at doing a lot of events, that is how I make a living and the majority of my time was spent on this.
As I was managing the team I made mistakes, I learned a lot and one thing I made clear with them all is that I would never take any money for my work, this included taking 0 from prize money & stickers, everything I did was for the team and to help the people I met and the team I believed in!
I have to admit being a manager was a lot harder than I expected, so much needs doing beyond what you see at events, a lot of background work and sometimes I was completely lost. Luckily I had help, I asked other people in the industry and I worked together with the boys as a team to make everything work.
I faced a lot of fair criticism in my role, other talent members even pushed our team during an interview about what I do for the team as if to say I didn’t add anything. People will always say something stupid in these types of situations but I’m proud and happy of what I did. I was the one who got Devilwalk to the team, I’ve been advising on all the offers, taking all the meetings, which offers were bad for us, some of which were hard to turn down but I just knew it was not going to be the right place for the team.
We had multiple offers over the last year and a half, some great but not the right fit for us, some that I would say were embarrassing like they wanted to massively underpay us or one organisation asked for 50% of the sticker money for a major we didn’t represent them at and we obviously would never sign that.
The talks and feelings with Guild were great from the very start. I was invited to the Sky Guild Gaming Centre in London, met with Guild Management and discussed what we could do I instantly remember telling the boys in the group chat after I left the HQ that I felt so good about this and that it was the most professional organisation I had dealt with when discussing Bad News Eagles.
When it came to the contract and negotiating side, I did my best but luckily all of us are signed to ULTI Agency so I didn’t have to worry and stress about any of the contract details and more tricky things. I’m honestly just so happy with how it all worked out!
I always said I would stop being a manager when the guys got an organisation and that is partly true but Guild came with a great offer for me. Now I will move into a consultant position within Guild, not acting as their manager. I can’t talk about it all in detail yet but they have some really big plans for their entire organisation and I believe my expertise can really help them achieve it…I’m excited for the future!»