Following a disappointing end to his season with Evil Geniuses, we got the opportunity to chat with Daniel "Vorborg" Vorborg during the summer break. He discussed his career path in esports, different strategies in management, and his perspective on the state of Counter-Strike teams.

ESL | Stephanie Lindgren

Just to get started, can you tell me a little bit about how you first got involved with esports?

Vorborg: Yeah, it's a long time ago now, but I was studying for my bachelor's degree, and it was about that time that I needed to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I was writing my bachelor's thesis, and my girlfriend asked me, what do you want to do? Because we're about to go into our master's degree. We're about to start life. You should probably get a job that has something to do with your education. But my answer was I just started watching League of Legends, the early seasons of LCS. I told her it would be incredibly cool to be a manager for a team like that because it had always been like a boyhood dream to be a football manager or coach or something. But that seemed a little far-fetched, and I don't know how to get started with something like that.

After I had the conversation with my girlfriend, I just started working with amateur teams as a manager, and then they liked some of the stuff that I did, just helping with schedule and just being there to help move along discussions, simple stuff like that. But then one player went to a better team. He asked me to come with him, and then it kind of escalated from there. In the end, I got a team together that qualified for the second-best league in Europe, which was called Challenger Series. In the final game, we beat Gamers Two, G2 Esports now. Five minutes after we beat them, Carlos "ocelote" called me up and said, we need a team that's in this league, so you guys want to sign? Seven days later, I dropped out of my master's degree. I moved to Madrid to live in the gaming house. I think that's 11 or 12 years ago now, and I have been doing esports full-time ever since.

How did you first get involved with the organization that you sort of ran, Copenhagen Flames?

Vorborg: I worked in League of Legends for five years managing, GM work, coachwork, and the offseason in League of Legends. If you don't go to the World Championship, that’s very long. So I had like four months doing nothing and figuring out what I wanted to do next. I met Steffen, who was the founder and CEO. I did some content work for an esports brand in Denmark, and he was a part of that too. So we met there, and I knew he had started his esports organization, which was very small at the time, but Copenhagen Flames. So I just messaged him, and I was like, hey, I have four months off; if I can help with anything, let me know. I figured it was a good way for me to keep developing my skill set. He only had teams in Counter-Strike, Overwatch, and Rocket League, which I knew nothing about, but I figured, hey, I can work on my mental coaching aspect, so I can help them both structure the day and lead discussions. If anyone has any ego issues or doesn't perform under pressure, I can come in, and I can try and help with that.

So Steffen took me up on that. He paid me in some Copenhagen Flames merchandise, and then I boot camped with the team leading into a big LAN at the time called Copenhagen Games. Then after I had done that, I was looking at what offers to take in League of Legends, but Steffen offered me to join as an equal partner in Copenhagen Flames with him. At the time, I had bounced a little bit between different teams, so I was kind of fed up with restarting all over, and I felt like, hey, if I go into Copenhagen Flames, it might be like a small organization, but it's up to me if we have success or not. So that felt nice because I felt like GMs or whatever kept making weird decisions and stuff like that, right? So I was thinking to myself, I could do a lot better than these guys. So I got the opportunity to go into Flames, and at the time, we had a yearly budget of like $30,000 to run everything. Not like a team or something, everything. I went in, became the Director of Esports, and co-owner together with Steffen, and then I was there for six years and ran it with him.

What are some things that you took from your time as the Director of Esports there?

Vorborg: A lot. It was six years. My role was pretty broad in the beginning because it was me and Steffen that were doing it full time, so we were doing everything. My title might have been fancy as Director of Esports, but I also ran the Twitter page or did the crappy graphics design. We didn't have the budget to hire anyone, so it was just doing whatever it takes to build this esports organization. But I think in the beginning, it was like learning that a lot of people start an esports organization, then they're like, oh, I guess we don't make any money. I get a lot of questions, what is the most important thing when you start a new organization? Steffen already had this locked down when I joined. You need to figure out what your sales pitch is. What is it that you do that other orgs don't do? Why should people follow you? You need to give them a reason to be fans of the team. You need to give sponsors a reason; why should we sponsor you? There are a million esports organizations out there. Why should we give you our hard-earned money?

In the beginning, we had it very clear and Steffen had already locked this in, so I don't want to take any credit for this, but he stopped having a Counter-Strike team because it was too expensive to be like number nine in Denmark in Counter-Strike or whatever. Took that budget and instead, we ended up being number one in Rocket League, Super Smash Bros, Overwatch, and Hearthstone. We had a couple of different titles at different times, but it was like, let's go out and conquer all the smaller titles. So if you are a Danish person that likes Hearthstone, of course, you need to follow Copenhagen Flames. If you like Rocket League, you have to follow Copenhagen Flames. That was the idea, right? We capture an audience because we could do that very cheaply. The budget for being number nine in Counter-Strike in Denmark, we could be number one in like five esports at the same time.

If we can go to a sponsor and say, hey, we're number nine in Denmark in Counter-Strike, does that sound cool, or does it sound cool to be like, we're number one in Hearthstone, Rocket League, Overwatch, and Super Smash Bros. So that was kind of like our sales pitch and being very open and engaging with the fans, all kinds of stuff like that, right? So that was a big focus point. Then as we went along, more like in terms of being the Director of Esports in Copenhagen Flames, I think we sold like 18 players total because of our place in the food chain of Counter-Strike. So it's all about scouting talent, developing talent, integrating people. What the optimal roster composition was, all that stuff I needed to do many, many times over because we sold so many players. So obviously, I feel like that has given me a unique perspective on what it takes to build rosters. But, in six years, there have been so many ups and downs, so much stress, so much pressure, and so many amazing experiences. So, I mean, it's hard to condense them down to a couple of things.

ESL | Stephanie Lindgren

Of course. In addition to doing esports directing, you started coaching in 2019. What made you want to make that transition?

Vorborg: Initially, we got this Counter-Strike team with Sycrone, HooXi, roeJ, Basso, and Farlig, and I wasn't meant to be the coach. We tried to get a coach. We had an interim coach for a little while, but after three months, I sat down and talked to them about how things were going. Then suddenly, it became very apparent to me that it was a very dysfunctional team we had. Counter-Strike at the time in Copenhagen Flames was by far our biggest investment. We had just pivoted our strategy from, like, okay, now we were number one in all these small esports. Now we feel like we have the financials to make a team that could be exciting to watch in Counter-Strike. So it was a lot of money for us. I mean, it was like 1k salaries, which wasn't crazy, but for us, that was a lot of money. That was like 60% of our player budget or whatever, but it was a dysfunctional team.

So to protect the investment, I inserted myself into the team to help out, because we couldn't find a coach within budget, which makes a lot of sense because the budget was very small, and it was like a full-time team. So I just started working full-time with the team, helping out. I was there for every practice, every official, every LAN tournament, every boot camp, but I didn't know anything about Counter-Strike. But I was there to ask the right questions, make sure that we applied logic to whatever we did, make sure we thought about how the schedule should look, what are we working on, make sure if there's ever disagreements in the team, make sure we reach conclusions we can all buy into. I was still building the business on the side, so I spent like 40 hours a week with the team and then like 30 hours building the business.

I didn't watch anti-strat in the beginning because I wasn't there to do anything Counter-Strike related at all. But then, as time passed, obviously spending 40 hours a week listening and watching Counter-Strike, you picked up a thing or two, right? So then the Copenhagen Flames also grew. We start with the $30,000 budget, right? At the end of my time in Copenhagen Flames, we were up to like 2.5 million budget or something, right? So we had many more employees, so I didn't have to do as much. So I started doing a little bit of anti-strat. I started having a couple of opinions on in-game stuff, right? It kind of developed, and then in the end, after pita left us, after he had been the head coach for the team for a while, we sat down, the team and I, and looked at the options that we had for potential head coaches.

We were like, hey, Flames is big enough that I can do nothing else but Counter-Strike and go all in, and we can do that, or we can hire these coaches. I didn't want to make that final call because I didn't want to abuse my powers. But the players were like, hey, let's run with you. So then I did that transition for the last six months I had in Copenhagen Flames, and then obviously took a job with EG doing the same afterward. So it's a little bit of a smooth transition over a couple of years that led me into full-time coaching.

ESL | Adela Sznajder

From more of a competitive standpoint, were you surprised at the success that Copenhagen Flames had in 2022?

Vorborg: Yes. I did have faith in us, and the roster that we built there was players that I knew very well. HooXi came back for his third spell at the club, so obviously, I knew him very well. RoeJ came back for his second term with us, I had already worked with Jabbi for close to a year, and I had worked with nicoodoz for maybe five months. Zyphon was the only one I didn't really know. I think it took us a week from when we gathered the team till we were top 30 in the world. But I think that was because we knew each other very well already.

I had already instilled a lot of my philosophies in the players in terms of how we work and how we act and how we give and take feedback and all that kind of stuff. Then from the get-go, we had a strong direction in-game wise, two veterans that believed in the same things, and three guys just completely buying into it. So it made sense to me that we were going to be good. But obviously, I don't think any of us thought that we were going to be in the quarterfinals at a major, number nine in the world, and stuff like that. I think even just qualifying for a major, just at the time, because we had never done it before, was a little bit unreal. The funny thing is that none of the players had anything about stickers in their contract because we had never really thought about the fact that we could be qualifying for a major. So after we already qualified for the major, suddenly we had to agree on what's a fair distribution here, boys? But that also kind of says how fast everything went.

How did you feel when the lineup quickly disbanded right after your strong performance at Antwerp?

Vorborg: Yeah, we knew that was going to happen already. Way back at IEM Fall, when we qualified for the Stockholm major, teams started to approach our players, also for the entire roster. We were actively selling them as a package deal because the guys did really want to continue working together. We knew right after Stockholm, we thought there was a 0% chance of keeping the roster under the Copenhagen Flames banner, and the team tried to find something together. But then, as time passed and it was like, okay, we're also going to look at individual offers. Before the Antwerp major even started, roeJ and nicoodoz had already signed with Fnatic. So the entire team knew before we started the Antwerp major that this was our last tournament together. So, it was something we were well prepared for, but still bittersweet. But it was like the perfect ending to that journey that after our first Stockholm major, where we were one round away from making the quarterfinals and then finally achieving that big arena game together in Antwerp, that was like a beautiful ending to that journey we shared.

ESL | Adela Sznajder

Unfortunately, the project in EG never really reached that high of a level. But were there any positives or good lessons that you feel you got out of your time at EG?

Vorborg: Oh, yeah, for sure. I still enjoyed my time at EG. I've been happy this past year. Still obviously some frustrating moments, but I've learned a ton. I got exposed to a lot of different ways of viewing Counter-Strike. I had only achieved success doing things in one way, the way we did it in Copenhagen Flames. Now I got to sit down and work with major winners in autimatic and valens and got exposed to Brehze and CeRq and neaLaN and all these types of ways of viewing Counter-Strike and looking at Counter-Strike. I think it has made me a much more versatile coach today than I was a year ago. So I see that as a big strength, and I think all the players I worked with in EG are good, and I can see them all having success in tier one, but we were just a bad composition of players and coach. We needed to pick or choose one direction and then probably replace the people that didn't make sense in the direction that we were going to go.

We never really got around, and then obviously, in the end, they decided to promote EG Black instead of going for any of the bigger changes. So yeah, we never really got around to it. But I mean, I still enjoyed my year. I know EG has seen a lot of scrutiny in the media for things like management stuff, but honestly, I mean, I had a great time. I was only treated with the utmost respect. Obviously, some things can be better, but every time I gave feedback on whatever I thought should be better, I was listened to, and they tried to improve it as best as they could. I don't have anything bad to say. I'm sad that we didn't get to make the pivot that I believe was necessary to be a tier-one team, and I didn't get that chance to show what I could do in a setup like that. But in the end, that's sports. That's how it is. Overall, I've still enjoyed my year at EG.

ESL | Adela Sznajder

If you could go back to 2016 or 2017 and give yourself advice, what would it be?

Vorborg: That's a great question. Honestly, I've been pretty happy with my progression and what I've learned, and what I've achieved. I think all the things I've done, I've been trying my hardest, I've been giving it my all. That was a big focus point for me around that time to not make any excuses for myself. I feel like I've mostly lived up to that. Sometimes I'm not perfect, but I'm honestly really proud of what I've achieved these past couple of years. So I honestly just wanted to do it all over again because it's been an amazing journey and I just really love and enjoy these past six years of my life and what I've been able to do. I feel so lucky that I get to do what I do every day, that I get to go work with video games for a living. I get to travel the world coaching people in video games. It's absolutely absurd. My advice would just be, keep doing what you're doing, because where I ended up, I'm really happy with. So whatever I was doing back then, I just keep doing that.

Being a coach who's worked in both national and international teams, why do you think there are so many more international teams in modern Counter-Strike than there used to be back in its early days?

Vorborg: I think for me, it's like a natural progression. But we can take the Danish scene. When I started, we probably had Astralis, Heroic, North, Fragsters, Copenhagen Flames, and Tricked. There are a lot of organizations that could afford and wanted to gamble and like full Danish lineups. But as time has gone on and there's more VC money coming into the scene, salaries are bigger, and the requirements out of the organizations are a lot higher today than they were back then in terms of what they can provide. No one is satisfied with making €3000 a month anymore if you show results. Everyone is almost running at a deficit, right? Small, national, or local organizations just have a very hard time keeping up with all these VC-funded teams. The VC-funded teams and teams of big investors usually come from bigger countries, North America, and so on. If we look at the ranking, obviously like Heroic were able to secure some funding from Norway. Now if they're taking funding from somewhere else, right?

Like FaZe from NA, G2 is an international brand. They're VC funded, and they're big international organizations. So with big international organizations, why should they bid on a full Danish lineup or something like that? It's also like the marketability of a Danish lineup. Who are you marketing to? You're only marketing to Danish people. That's 6 million people. You can't have Astralis, Heroic, and three other organizations all marketing toward these 6 million people because that's not a good business. There's room for one team, maybe two. So just like the way everyone wants more money, everyone wants everything, it just becomes international then because it's not sustainable to get that market. The same goes for all these other countries right now. I know the Danish scene the best, so I just use that as an example. But the same goes for almost all the other countries. It's not feasible to run that many organizations out of one single country. I think it's just a natural progression. It is a bit of a shame.

ESL | Helena Kristiansson

One last thing, you said you're interested in staying a coach in the next step in your career. Do you have any specific goals you want to accomplish in your next project?

Vorborg: Yeah, because of my personal life, I'm getting a little bit older. I'm 31 years old now. This past year with EG, I probably had like 230 days on the road. It's very taxing to be a coach or a player on a tier-one team. I don't see myself coaching when I have kids, and I will probably have kids. So the way I see it, I'm on a timer a little bit because I don't see myself traveling that much when I have kids. So I feel like I have three years left in my coaching career, and it only makes sense for me to join a project as a head coach where I can see myself competing in tier one, like challenging for trophies. That doesn't have to be right now, but it needs to be me joining a place that has the resources and ambitions to compete in tier one because otherwise, it doesn't make sense. I think I've already proven that I can do more with less. I can develop talent. I'm not interested in proving that all over again, because I want to prove more in the next three years.

So if I can't find a coaching gig where I feel like I have the opportunity to prove this to myself, then I could see myself just moving into being a GM or Director of Esports somewhere or maybe even a player agent. I feel like I have unfinished business being a head coach. I have more to prove to myself. So if I have an opportunity to do that, that's going to be my priority. Then ideally, in three years, I go into a player agency or GM work or whatever. But if the right opportunity is not there as a coach, then I don't mind speeding up that process and just going into more of a back office kind of gig immediately.

Conclusion

We would like to thank Vorborg for taking the time to talk with us. We wish him all the best in his future endeavors, wherever they may be, and look forward to seeing him back very soon.

You can keep up with Vorborg on his Twitter.