LCS: Doublelift Bashed NA’s Mindset So Here’s 5 Ways Teams Can Fix It

2. Include Contract Penalties

I said I wanted to focus more on the stick than the carrot, so here is the flip side to those incentives. Teams should also include provisions in their contracts that can cause players to lose money if they play poorly, conduct themselves poorly, and don’t listen to their coaches.

Again, these provisions exist all the time in traditional sports, where players are suspended or fined for “conduct detrimental to the team.” These can be for anything from being late to practice, disrespecting an owner, player, or coach in an interview, or just attitude problems. If you assign a real-dollar value to a player’s behavior, you either incentivize them to change or you save some money on a player with a bad attitude.

And I would go even further than to simply have the option for fines or suspensions for traditional misbehavings. If I was running a team, I’d include provisions in the contract that players must play a certain number of solo queue games in a month or risk a fine. Having a solo queue account suspended or flagged by Riot would also be a fine, as would instances of trolling or not taking games seriously.

Their behavior in practices, their attitude towards their coaches and teammates, their punctuality and participation, these should all be aspects of their job performance that can negatively affect how much money they’re taking home. If you want your players to take their job seriously, make it clear it’s serious to you that they do their jobs well.