Andrey “B1ad3” Gorodenskiy, a former Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player, has boarded Ukrainian esports organisation Natus Vincere as its Esports Director.
His most recent involvements in esports before this move saw him coach teams such as Flipsid3 Tactics and Gambit.
B1ad3 discusses his new venture in the announcement: “I am glad to join NAVI, it is one of the best esports organizations in the world. I am sure that we will have fruitful cooperation ahead of us. For me, this is a new challenge: many plans and ideas that we will begin to implement very soon!”
His immediate responsibilities under his new role at Natus Vincere include working the teams that represent the organisation on personnel and transfer policies, scheduling for events and bootcamps, seeking employees who can prepare players both physically and psychologically.
Yevhen Zolotarov, CEO of Natus Vincere touched on the new hire: “Esports industry, among many problems has also a staff shortage: people from the industry, for the most part, have a poor understanding of the business component, while people from outside of the industry do not understand esports well enough. Nevertheless, there are exceptions — I see Andrey as such. We have known each other for 19 years: not many people know but I was the captain of his first team and told him what to do on the map. I have long wanted to work with him in NAVI and I am very glad that such an opportunity has appeared.”
Natus Vincere has forged a couple of partnerships in the past couple of months, one with streaming platform Caffeine and the other with analytics platform Shadow (a company under DOJO Madness).
Esports Insider says: This is obviously an integral role in the organisation, ensuring the players are prepared for events and are on-schedule is incredibly important. It’s good to see a former player get an opportunity such as this because those who retire typically become coaches and that’s literally about it.