16,67% of players could be Finnish and this ruins it for you? eSM 2019 will allow 33% of the team to be foreign. While we want to be equal where we can, we decided limiting the number to just one instead of two for the SCL in order to make sure the Swedish players have the best opportunity to show and grow.
There is a bunch of pre-existing teams that have a mixed roster and by allowing a small quota of foreigners we want to prevent breaking up teams due to unnecessarily strict rules, as some teams would be restricted from playing in most leagues and tournaments in that case.
Allowing a small quota of foreign players is nothing new in hockey and in the context of eHockey it will make SCL and eSM even more internationally interesting. Creating a tournament/league and throwing in a prize pool and event doesn't automatically generate success and future events - we need people to play, attend, view it online and find it interesting in order to guarantee success.
I didn't like that we were unable to allow foreign players for eSM 2018 despite our best efforts and I got a bunch of angry and disappointed messages from some people that were unable to participate. Now we've been able to fix that with eSM 2019 and the SCL, but sadly it's impossible to please everyone.