"The uniform standard contract – this, in particular, should be to build mutual trust between players and clubs, less scheming, and more sincerity."

"Yes, the club has indeed had some problems with contracts."

"The reason DGE sold its players' contracts was that other clubs signed directly with us, so they didn't dare to play tricks."

"If free agents join these clubs, who knows what kind of contract traps they might encounter."

Zhang Yuan was well aware that, in the current model, many contracts prepared by clubs had hidden pitfalls.

Clubs, for their own benefit, would certainly try to lock in the most promising players at the lowest possible cost, while players, for their own benefit, would certainly pursue higher salaries and more opportunities.

Neither party's behavior was blameworthy in itself, as both were acting in their own interests, but the problem was that this would seriously undermine mutual trust between clubs and players.

In order to snatch up a star player, clubs would often offer a high price, but bury all sorts of traps in the contract waiting for you to fall into.

It was like the tricks of many e-commerce websites, giving you discounts on the surface, but actually setting up barriers for you elsewhere.

They'd say all the right things when negotiating, but once you signed the contract, you'd be dumbfounded.

The result was that players didn't trust clubs, and clubs didn't trust players, often turning into a zero-sum game where the weaker party suffered.

And in most cases, the weaker party was the player.

After all, big clubs had their own legal teams, giving them a distinct advantage when signing contracts.

And President Pei's required standard contract was for everyone to clearly state their prices and avoid all the fluff.

All the previous complex contract clauses were clarified, with changes only made to the time limit, breach of contract penalties, transfer fees, specific salaries, and special clauses.

The special clauses here were not to restrict the players, but to ensure that the club's promises would not become empty checks.

For example, if two clubs were vying for a player, the former offered more money, and the latter offered less but guaranteed playing time, then the player would have more options.

Often, the reason players hesitated was not because they were greedy.

Each contract was different, the one offering more money had hidden pitfalls, and the one offering less wasn't necessarily more honest. You couldn't take the contract back and study it slowly, so how could you make a decision rashly?

It was like selling something, where each buyer didn't offer a definite amount, but a whole bunch of complicated terms. If players didn't want to be tricked, they could only spend a lot of energy distinguishing them.

But the problem was that players weren't specialized legal professionals in the first place. Finding a specialized legal team was time-consuming and laborious, and not all of them could be trusted.

Being a professional player was a young man's game. A lifetime of income and prospects might be concentrated in the peak years, so how could they not shop around?

When clubs bought players, they would also pick and choose among many excellent players. This was normal business behavior and there was nothing wrong with it.

But the club's ability to withstand risk was much stronger. Signing the wrong person was just spending more money to support a benchwarmer, while the player's ability to withstand risk was much weaker.

Once something went wrong, an excellent young player might bury their entire career.

Therefore, President Pei's goal was very clear: stop with the fluff, just these few regulations, so that players without much legal knowledge could understand them and make their own choices.

Free agent players could contact all clubs, these clubs each made promises, and the official acted as an intermediary, with anyone who went back on their word paying a penalty.

Clubs should stop thinking about getting lucky with a low price and treating players as slaves; and individual players should stop thinking about getting high salaries and coasting by, taking advantage of the clubs.

Everyone took a step back, so that no one would cheat anyone, so that the players' income could roughly match their value, and not be too outrageous.

And the blind auction method was to prevent those wealthy clubs from maliciously raising prices and squeezing the survival space of small clubs. At the same time, the players' interests would not be harmed. Clubs could not unite to suppress prices, and truly capable players could still get high salaries.

Moreover, this contract did not harm the interests of the clubs.

The interests of the clubs were mainly in three aspects: the attention, popularity and brand awareness brought by the competition; the real economic benefits brought by sponsors; and ensuring that cultivating players would not benefit others.

In terms of popularity and brand awareness, President Pei's supervision would not have any impact on this.

In terms of sponsors and economic benefits, there was actually no loss.

Clubs could still sign long-term contracts with players and collect transfer fees, so there was no impact on this aspect of their interests.

However, clubs wanting to lock in a player with a contract and permanently benching them after a conflict would no longer be possible, because the standard contract required by President Pei obviously did not support this.

Once this happened, President Pei would find a way to get the person out.

This standard contract was not to starve the clubs to death, but to let them eat less and spit out a portion to the players.

In this way, mutual trust was established between the players and the clubs through the intervention of Tengda officials, and there was no need to play tricks on each other. And if a club or player had any demands on the contract, they could be handed over to the official for mediation and resolution.

Of course, there was no absolute fairness in this world, but at least relative fairness could be pursued.

Which contract was fairer, the one given by the club? Or the one given by President Pei?

This was obvious.

Because clubs and players ultimately had to protect their own interests, which was understandable, but it also meant that they would not consider the impact on the entire e-sports environment.

And President Pei was completely objective and impartial in his position. His determination could be seen from his statements.

Other event organizers were aligned with the clubs in terms of interests, and often dared not, or had no need, to offend the clubs, so they could only let the players suffer in silence.

But President Pei's attitude was very clear: he wouldn't spoil the players, but he wouldn't spoil the clubs even more.

Clubs that didn't agree with this standard contract definitely had their own little schemes in mind, thinking about playing some tricks on the players in the contract.

If that was the case, then sorry, we can't manage other fields, but you can't participate in gog's e-sports competitions. We would rather give up the popularity and resources brought by this club than maintain the fairness and justice of the entire e-sports system.

Thinking of this, Zhang Yuan couldn't help but sigh, this was a determination to cut off one's arm!

In the short term, this move would inevitably incur the dissatisfaction of many clubs, and even cause the popularity of gog e-sports competitions to decline and player salaries to decrease.

But in the long run, the entire ecosystem would be healthier.

Even if player salaries decreased, it would also mitigate huge risks for them.

Obviously, President Pei thought it was "worth it" because he believed that the importance of a healthy league ecosystem far outweighed the popularity brought by a few clubs, and that whether or not these clubs came to support it, he was confident that he could run the gog league!

And now, taking advantage of the opportunity to establish the GPL league, establishing the admission system for each club was actually preventing problems before they occurred.

Because each club's gog division had only been established for a short time, even if these clubs withdrew, President Pei could find another company to take over or even buy them out in a package, it wouldn't cost much money, and the impact would be within a controllable range.

If the popularity really rose in the future, it would be even more difficult to establish these norms.

It was like treating a disease. Prevention in advance was definitely better than performing surgery after the disease had reached an advanced stage.

As for why it was specifically stipulated that DGE only needed the minimum amount of the transfer fee?

Zhang Yuan originally didn't understand. Wouldn't this harm the interests of the DGE club?

But then he thought again, this was precisely an important supplement to the entire mechanism!

Many new players had no bargaining power at all before they achieved results.

This was normal. After all, clubs also had to take risks when buying people. Some players played well in rank, but lost their nerve in competitions. Wouldn't it be a blood loss for clubs to spend a lot of money to buy them back?

Therefore, rookie contracts were often very low in price.

But this gave rise to a new problem: those truly talented players could only sign rookie contracts at the beginning, with low prices and long terms. If they achieved results, they could not get the corresponding salary, and if they had a falling out with the club, they might even be benched.

Many players only had one or two years of their peak period. One wrong step could bury their entire career.

There was no right or wrong in this matter. Everyone was acting in their own interests, but it would cause a de facto waste.

Talented rookies with low salaries would definitely have mood swings, which would affect their performance in competitions. If they had a falling out with the club and were benched, this excellent player would be buried forever, which was a loss for the entire league.

Therefore, the fact that the DGE club only needed the minimum amount of the transfer fee was actually good news for these rookies.

If they were talented and confident rookies, they could choose to come to the DGE club first, and they wouldn't fall into the pit of the rookie contract. If they achieved results, they would naturally be bought by better clubs.

The DGE club was equivalent to completing a screening, trying out the players for the club, and also providing an opportunity for the players to prove themselves.

And for the DGE club, this was not a loss either.

Because this move would make more excellent rookies with high aspirations want to enter the DGE club, which could ensure that the quality of the DGE club's new players was higher than that of other clubs, and always maintain a relatively high level of strength, which was conducive to maintaining the DGE's brand value.

Although they didn't participate in competitions, they could still show their presence in front of the audience by sending these new faces to the league.

At that time, every time a brilliant rookie appeared, the audience would find that they came from DGE, so they would naturally maintain a very high level of attention to the DGE club.

With more and more attention, sponsorship would naturally become better and better. Moreover, other clubs bought people from here, although the transfer fee was small, it still existed.

And the beauty of this decision was that other clubs couldn't learn it.

Because the DGE's operating model was different from all other clubs. They didn't participate in competitions and didn't need to achieve results. They only needed to train players. There was no competitive relationship at all. In fact, it was mutually beneficial.

What's more, this move could better maintain the ecology of the entire gog league, and the entire Tengda Group could benefit from it.

So, was it not worth sacrificing a little bit of DGE's immediate interests to obtain long-term benefits?