G2 Esports closes Madrid offices to establish Berlin as its main operations center.

The organization will also part ways with its Spanish teams—who played under the G2 Vodafone brand.

Founder and CEO Carlos Rodriguez cites a lack of synchronization between top leagues and localized academy teams.

G2 Esports announced on March 31 that it will be establishing a central operations center in Berlin—and is thus closing its offices in Madrid. This also means the organization will be selling on the rosters from its G2 Vodafone sister team.

Having originally established secondary offices in Berlin in 2017, G2 Esports said in a press release that it is now searching for a new training facility in the German capital, to serve as a bootcamp space for all the organization’s teams, and which can also be used as a fan hub.

[perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Rodriguez said selling the teams in Spain is a by-product of Riot Games’ franchising plans for the 2019 EU LCS.[/perfectpullquote]

Speaking to The Esports Observer, G2 Esports CEO and founder Carlos “ocelote” Rodriguez said selling the teams in Spain is a by-product of Riot Games’ franchising plans for the 2019 EU LCS , which he believes will develop Berlin further as a central location for European esports.

“It’s the same as it happened with NA LCS ,” he says. “Every top team wanted to have their headquarters in LA. We want to have the same here. Whatever happens with EU LCS, we know that Berlin is going to be an incredibly important city to be in.”

“Initially, the main reason we opened up these teams in Spain is we wanted to, eventually, provide talented players to our first international team.” He adds, however, that the organization found that with most of the top esports—League of Legends , Counter-Strike , Overwatch —there was not a good enough ecosystem surrounding academy teams. “You literally have to go to NA LCS, where they have an actual academy league, to find that.”

The announcement mentions that G2 Esports wanted to reconfigure its approach to academy teams, and will wait until “the right moment to compete in the Spanish scene again.” When Riot Games announced the start of the 2019 franchising process for EU LCS, it told TEO it would retain the regional league structure introduced this year, but any new additions to the EU LCS in the vein of the NA LCS academy league will not be announced just yet.

“One thing is for sure about regional markets,” says Rodriguez. “You can probably have a really decent profit margin on your operations, as a company, by focusing on that one market. But if your goals are global, far beyond one country…then having teams locally will only be counterproductive for the future of your company. Simply because your scope is literally twenty times as big, as having one team in one country.”

Full disclosure: Jens Hilgers is co-owner of G2 Esports and partner at BITKRAFT Esports Ventures. BITKRAFT Esports Ventures is an investor in Esports Business Solutions UG, the company behind The Esports Observer.