The latest news coming in from WESA is that it has adopted a number of ‘comprehensive regulations’; these include a Multi-Team Ownership Prohibition, a Personal Code of Conduct and Sanction Regulations.
Ken Hershman, Executive Chairman and Commissioner of WESA commented: “At WESA, we are committed to creating industry-wide standards in esports that benefit member teams, their players and the esports industry at large.
“These new standards and regulations will further our goal of better professionalising esports and ensure that all of our organizations are operating on the same level playing field.”
The point of the Multi-Team Ownership Prohibition is that no one entity owns or controls more than one esports team participating in a WESA event.
When it comes to teams that have a pre-existing multi-team ownership, the WESA board has decided to grant them a grace period of up to 18 months to amend this. During this time period, the teams will be run independently.
The Personal Code of Conduct meanwhile is focused on defining ‘the values and principles of WESA’ and it lays down the rules for conduct and behaviour for both those in WESA and external parties. This is a further bid to ensure integrity and includes preventing anything that might jeopardize the integrity of matches or competitions.
Finally the Sanctions Regulations is in place to install a clear set of rules and methods for leveling sanctions, their scope and the appeal process. Naturally there are different levels of punishment depending on the type and severity of violation. We have no details about what this could mean and the variety of sanctions but we can presume that it’ll be anything from temporary player bans, to points subtraction in league format tournaments to flat out sending teams home.
Esports Insider says: There has been a lot of noise about WESA since it began and whilst this all sounds like a step in the right direction, we’ll wait to see how it plays out before passing judgement.