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SK Gaming
Location:	Germany
Founded:	1997
Manager(s):	Alexander Müller
Divisions:	Counter-Strike; Warcraft III; FIFA; World of Warcraft; Quake III; Racing; Xbox 360
Website:	http://www.sk-gaming.com

SK Gaming is an e-Sports gaming team from Germany. It was founded in 1997 by seven gamers living in Oberhausen. SK Gaming fields teams in many different games and are particularly known for their success in Counter-Strike tournaments. SK is one of the founding members of the G7 Teams.

[edit] History

DU ÄR FEL SJÖHEST was founded in 1997 as a German ‘’Quake’’ clan by four brothers and two accomplices in Oberhausen, Germany. The original line-up of Schroet Kommando consisted of Ralf “Griff” Reichert, Daniel “Godlike” Beames, Tim “Burke” Reichert, Benjamin “Kane” Reichert, Kristof “Speed” Salwiczek, Carsten “Storch” Kramer and Sven “Ramses” Tümmers.^[1]. According to Ralf Reichert, the original naming of the organization originated from one of the members repeatedly shouting, "Schrööt!" This was a common occurrence from whenever a double-barreled shotgun would be handled, due to the translation meaning "shrapnel". Eventually, the team adopted this into their name, thus becoming "Schroet Kommando". Since then, the organization began using their abbreviation more often, until it eventually became SK Gaming.^[2]

Initially, the house of the Beames family was the SK headquarters. At first, Schroet Kommando played mainly Quake, Quake 2 and Quake 3 Arena. SK became one of the first clans to feature an all-female team. A major step forward towards professional gaming was the entry of Andreas "bds" Thorstensson in the early 2000s. He made SK the first clan to charge payment for premium services ("SK Insider", a virtual marketplace where paying members could download demos, mods and add-ons better and earlier than others, talk directly to SK gamers etc.),^[3] SK became a Counter-Strike-oriented clan. Their major international successes came when they took the players of the successful Swedish Counter-Strike clan Ninjas in Pyjamas (NiP for short) into their organization. The SK Counter-Strike team ha]]. Other SK Gaming teams are also notably successful in their respective games.

On February 1, 2003 SK Gaming became the first club in FPS gaming to contract their players when SK Sweden became contractually bound to the clan.^[4] Having begun contracting their players, SK also set other precedents regarding contracts: on May 18, 2004 they were the first team to receive a fee for a player transfer after rivals Team NoA bought SK.swe player Ola "elemeNt" Moum out of his contract.^[5]

At the beginning of the 2005 season, the Counter-Strike players decided not to renew their contracts and to re-form Ninjas in Pyjamas, because of the distribution of the prize money and disagreements with the management.^[6] However, later some of the original players returned to the club in summer 2005. ^[6]

The 2006 season brought no successes to the Counter-Strike team. Most notably, the team failed to qualify for the Electronic Sports World Cup, in which Sweden was represented by rivals fnatic and Ninjas in Pyjamas. The team did manage to qualify however for the KODE5 finals, now unsuccessful at beating their two rivals. At the KODE5 finals, they won two matches and lost to team MiBR in the group stages. They then lost to wNv in the single elimination round, placing 5th-8th overall. Success did come for the Quake 4 squad, as Swedish star player Johan "Toxic" Quick managed to win eight out of the ten major tournaments this year, including four out of five World Championships. Also the FIFA 06 squad had a successful year, the team managed to win the prestigious ESL Pro Series twice, and German player hero won the World Cyber Games championship.

Shortly before the release of the Sunwell Plateau in World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, SK Gaming gained partnership with Curse, one of the highest-ranked guilds at the time [1]. However, on October 1, 2008, their PvE team was dismissed due to differences in interests and on November 10, it was announced that the PvE team would merge with Nihilum, which was leaving Mousesports as well.[2] ^[7]On July 28, 2008, SK Gaming dismissed its Call of Duty 4 team, however on December 28, in an unexpected move, SK Gaming recruited a large roster of XBox 360 players to represent them in Call of Duty 4, Pro Evolution Soccer, Guitar Hero, sports, racing and Gears of War 2 and Halo 3. [3][4]

By March of 2009, SK Gaming had recruited an entire four World of Warcraft PvP teams, a significant number for any professional electronic sports organization. Also, the Gears of War 2 team had parted ways with SK, along with the significant parting of the DotA team.^[8] On June 22, 2009, SK Gaming suffered an embarrassing recruitment fiasco when their newly-recruited StarCraft: Brood War roster turned out to not be relevant as the team manager of the StarCraft squad failed to inform his players of SK's deal and did not mention that the players were already under contract of another organization.^[9]

[edit] Business model

As of 2008, SK Gaming is organised as a so-called Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung. The owners of SK Gaming are Andreas "bds" Thorstensson and Alexander "TheSlash" Müller-Rodic, who both work full-time for the clan and are head of further 10 full-time professional SK members. A minority stake is still held by founder Ralf "Griff" Reichert. SK Gaming is sponsored by Acer, SteelSeries, Adidas, Kingston, gamed!de, Creative, Western Digital, Bigben, Inferno Online and also finances itself by the "SK Insider" zone on their own website, which was re-booted in May 2009. However, according to Rodic, 85% of the clan's funds comes from their sponsors.^[10]