When I initially joined Team Huma in January of 2016, I was excited to be given the opportunity to prove to everyone that I was still a talented League of Legends coach. I considered myself lucky to be able to work with such a talented team as well as talented man in Karl “Dentist” Krey. However, despite my initial excitement, it was quickly derailed by our “owner” Behdad Jaafarian and his girlfriend at the time, Nicole Manning.

Behdad approached Karl in November saying he was new to eSports and looking to invest and wanted to know if Karl could help assemble a team. The roster you see today is the sole work of Karl. It was only after the team was officially signed that Behdad informed Karl that Nicole Manning was the General Manager of the Organization. She was delusional enough to believe that she was capable of obtaining $300,000 in REVENUE within the first year of having a Challenger Series team LOCATED IN EUROPE. If you want to see her “business proposal” I’m sure I have the link somewhere..it looks like something an 8th grader would do as a homework assignment in Powerpoint. As the “General Manager” she basically delegated work and made google docs. She always had meetings with “potential sponsors” but they never amounted to ANYTHING. It took Karl roughly 3 days to have sponsors willing to sign. Long story short, Nicole Manning was basically there because she was Behdad’s girlfriend as she contributed nothing of value to the organization. The only thing she did contribute was racism directed towards HolyPhoenix because she wanted Tabbz, stating that she wanted to work with him for so long and also if we got a “Turk” it would be more complicated.

Now let’s talk about our 22 year old “Owner,” Behdad Jaafarian. Last year, Behdad was the owner of Nevo Gaming, some UK eSports company. He approached Gamers2 and said he owned a house and wanted to partner with them. Long story short, turns out he couldn’t afford the lease and the company had 4-5 owners who were under the age of 18. Gamers2 was wise and told him to fuck off. Unlucky that I didn’t know this until Feb. 15thish.

Prior to joining, I was promised a contract the second we qualified for EU Challenger Series. I was also told that I would be compensated for my previous work, but to this day I have neither received a contract or salary from Behdad. Because Behdad could not afford to pay a lawyer, Karl had to hire lawyers himself to draw up my contract and sent it to Behdad to sign. Over the course of 2 months, I was promised a contract in the middle of January, first week of February and last week of February. The contract stipulated I would be compensated for February, so I’m assuming that is why he didn’t ever sign it. I’m sure you are figuring out by now but Behdad has no money and is too delusional to sell the team. But more on that later.

Alright. So the team is assembled and I come in January 2nd. The first few weeks go off fine. We practise, make improvements and qualify for the EU Challenger Series. However, around the middle of the month it started to go downhill. Let’s run down January in bullet point:

- Behdad was 19 days late in paying players and never paid anyone on the staff, excluding Nicole Manning (he claims it was a paypal issue but it was 100% to avoid paying taxes)

- Players were promised a house for February, meaning the lease had to be signed on January 15th. Karl found several houses, but Behdad could not afford to pay for rent and security deposit.

- The contracts the players signed were written by Nicole Manning and filled with numerous grammatical mistakes. Behdad claimed to have spent 10k on having them written by esportslawEU, however she can tell you that she did not write them. The contracts turned out to be ILLEGAL and Riot was ready to disqualify Huma from the EU Challenger Series before myself and Karl sought out our own lawyers to draw up actual contracts for the team. The cost came out of our own pocket because Behdad couldn’t afford to pay for them.

- Nicole Manning was unable to book scrims for the team. This was her ONLY duty. Despite her hindering team improvement and players and coaching staff begging her to stop booking scrims, it took several hours of Skype Calls to actually have her agree. After this, she literally had no responsibilities within the org.

- In order to get HolyPhoenix’s visa, there needed to be a flight booked so there was a document that showed HolyPhoenix would come back to Turkey when he was done with EUCS playoffs. Behdad could not afford to pay for the flight, he made his Aunt pay for it. Karl had to handle the entire Visa process because Behdad could not afford to hire a lawyer. To be specific, it was actually Karl’s Turkish girlfriend, who fortunately had enough knowledge and experience to help us acquire the visa.

January was clearly a mess but February was where it became a full on clown fiesta. At the end of January, Behdad had a call with Karl and myself, where he openly stated that he was unable to afford both player salaries and a gaming house. He also made it clear that he did not have the capability to fund this team beyond February. With this new information, it became clear that the best option for the safety of the players, Karl and myself would be if Behdad sold the team.

At the beginning of February, there was discussion with an interested organization who wished to purchase the Huma roster and the offer was far more than Behdad will ever deserve. Over the course of November - February, Behdad invested roughly 25k into the team and this all went into salary. He literally could not cover any other costs for the organization. No staff was contracted or paid, the team did not have a gaming house secured for February and Behdad had admitted he could not fund the team past this month, although a professional environment and infrastructure was one of the primary reasons why those high calibre players even agreed to sign.  The players at this time no longer wished to even communicate with Behdad as he would lie constantly about his financial situation and say he just needed 2 more weeks (which became a team meme.) As you can imagine, the players wanted nothing to do with Behdad and asked him twice in meetings to be sold to the interested organization.

The interested organization made 5 separate offers, all of which Behdad rejected. Please keep in mind he had spent roughly 25k and had no money for the following month. Oh, and he is 22 years old. The offers can be found below:

Offer #1: 60K

Behdad rejected this offer because it was not enough money. He wanted to continue to be involved and hold a share of the team. Essentially, Behdad wanted to create a monthly salary from the sale, which the interested party flat out rejected.

Offer #2: 80K

Same reasons as above.

Offer #3: 100K

Same reasons as above. Please note in a skype call with myself and Karl, Behdad had agreed to sell for 100K and be out completely. At this point, me and Karl had lost almost all of our credibility with the interested organization simply because when we presented the offers and operating costs and told them that Behdad would agree to this because he told us he would, he turned around and declined them again. During the 4th offer, the negotiation went directly between Behdad and the interested organization without any involvement from myself or Karl. Behdad told them the reason why he denied the 100K was because he wasn’t given a formal offer in the first place, which is total bullshit.

Offer #4: Amount N/A

I can only assume same reasons.

Offer #5: Amount N/A

I can only assume same reasons which is funny because this time I can tell you the offer was definitely formal enough for Mr. Behdad Jaafarian :)

The players openly asked Behdad to sell them twice in team meetings, on Feb. 2nd and Feb 8th. During the week between the meetings, the first 3 offers were all rejected by Behdad. The final 2 offers were rejected after the 2nd meeting. Despite their pleas and openly saying that they did not want to work for Behdad, he decided that he would not sell the team. Why did he decide not to sell? He apparently now had money. He showed Karl what we thought was his bank account and it had the funds to continue operation short-term. Turns out him and his father have the same name and he showed Karl his dad’s bank account. The players all knew that he had rejected 5 offers from the interested organization and no longer wanted to even speak to him. However, because he was the owner of the EUCS spot, they had to play for him or be replaced. Despite not having a contract or being paid, I chose to continue to work with the players because we loved working together and I could not leave them alone with this guy.

So he showed Karl these funds and asked Karl to book a bootcamp that would start on Feb. 18th. His super plan was to create the best bootcamp ever to win back the players or something. This guy was actually delusional enough to believe that anyone still wanted to work with him. So everyone hesitantly agreed to bootcamp starting Feb. 18. Why a bootcamp? Well, Behdad didn’t have the money so when Karl had found another house we could move into, we couldn’t afford the 10k security deposit. Because he couldn’t afford to pay for a gaming house, something that was promised to the players, a bootcamp was the only other option we had. It’s probably a really nice situation for Karl to walk around Berlin, talk with several landlords and give them the ok that we would take the place, only to make them wait several days for the necessary paperwork and eventually say sorry I lagged. So for our bootcamp we would play at an office and stay at a hotel or Airbnb with very little budget to work with.

Karl pulled off a miracle and got a super nice office for the entire bootcamp (over a month) for only $1000. We then found suitable accommodations and Karl was ready to book the entire thing. This was on Feb. 9th. The players and myself were amazed at how Karl was able to find us such an amazing bootcamp for such a low cost. All that was left to do was have them bill Behdad for it. To be billed, Behdad needed a tax certification number (VAT.) He did not have one and was clearly in no hurry to get one. He claims to have been declined when he applied for one, but that was 2 days ago (Feb. 20) meaning that for 11 days, he had no urgency to do anything. So, as always Behdad basically didn’t have the money and was stalling which made Karl lose credibility with the bootcamp owners. I think the most disgusting part was how Behdad wanted to handle the flights. Because he couldn’t afford to pay our flights, Behdad told Karl to get Riot to pay for our flights to Berlin. The only issue? We had not booked the bootcamp office or any accommodations, so effectively Riot was booking our tickets to Berlin and we had no where to stay. Karl couldn’t tell Riot because under these conditions, they sure as hell wouldn’t even book us the flights.

This also put Karl in a horrible spot with Riot again because he had to delay sending Riot the information because it was ethically wrong to have Riot book flights without us having accommodations. This was the reason why we delayed sending travel information and ultimately were the last team to submit the paperwork, which is funny because we will be the first team to arrive in Berlin. Riot probably loves Karl. So basically, Behdad’s super plan to book the best bootcamp ever to fix his relationship with the players failed because yet AGAIN, he was broke and couldn’t actually afford the operating costs of the team.

Now comes the real interesting part. This last weekend. On Feb.14th, Behdad was approached by an organization interested in purchasing one of our players. I did not even know about this until Friday, when Karl informed me as the Head Coach to be prepared to lose this player prior to playoffs. At this point, it was not about asking me for an opinion, but preparing me for the situation because as you all know, a buyout involves money and money is something Behdad doesn’t have and he was still delusional enough to believe that he was fit to own this team. This situation even made me and Karl clash. While Karl tried to explain to me the business side of this decision and the necessity to get money into the org, as the coach I only focused on the impact this move would have on the team, our chances to succeed and ultimately fulfill our goals. This roster, myself and Karl were only still here because we all love working together. We knew the hand we were dealt was shit and that we were trapped for the time being. However, as soon as it was mentioned that Behdad was ready to sell a player only because he needed money, I reached my breaking point. To add onto this, Behdad had lined up a new investor who was willing to take over 50% of the operating costs of the organization if the player was sold. Because Behdad has no money, selling this player would bring in the funds he needed to pay for the team at least for a couple of weeks. So one player was going to be sold, and the new investor had multiple players for multiple roles who would be joining the roster, which implied that Behdad was going to look to sell more than just one player. Why would he do this? Behdad is too much of a hooligan to realize when to do the right thing and sell. Keep in mind that due to a really lucky circumstance, the two players that are lined up to go are the two most verbal players against Behdad. What a happy little coincidence :~)

It was also during this past weekend where Behdad admitted openly to Karl over a Skype call that if we do not sell the player, there is no chance whatsoever to run operating costs or pay any contractual bound bonuses, which every player has if we made LCS except for one (which is another lucky coincidence because that player only had 20 minutes to sign his contract. What a happy little accident.) This implies that Behdad wanted us to fail to make the LCS so that he was not bound to pay any bonuses out because he could not afford them. Due to this and the fact that Karl did not want to lie to the player (the player did not want to talk to Behdad at all), Karl jumped into a call with the player and told him the only thing that could potentially save the situation, which is the truth. That truth got denied by Behdad when the player confronted him and Karl got put into place for telling him. In the time I have written this small piece, the outcome of this potential happy little accident is still undetermined.

Oh by the way, the article that has been written by Jacob Wolf of the Daily Dot was published because Behdad thought it was a great idea to give Nicole Manning (who at that time was no longer working for the organization) the task to approach Jacob Wolf and ask him to release an article about a bidding war to push the price of Huma up and get the interest of more potential buyers. Did I mention Nicole Manning called the 100k offer “utter shit” and not worth her or Behdad’s time?  There is some good news however: They got their article :)

I want to conclude this writing before I have written something too long. At this time the 5 players, Karl, myself and our analyst Kami are only still here because we want to work together and attempt to qualify for LCS as a family. We have so far managed mostly positive results despite our shitty situation and this whole experience has brought the 8 of us (players, Karl, myself and Kami) closer together. It’s no surprise that our results have been so inconsistent and underwhelming because we literally have no options other than to play with Behdad as the owner of the spot since he has made it crystal clear that he will not sell this team for any reasonable price.

My purpose for writing this nice little piece was to shed light on what our current situation is and hope that we can bring enough attention to it so that the correct course of action can be taken and people get some insight to the facts presented by the Dailydot article. I’m sorry for making this too long and I’m sorry for being put into a situation where I have to do this, but if I’ve learned one thing in the two months I’ve worked here, it’s that the truth is not one of Behdad Jaafarian’s strengths.