League Administration: Clarification on Player Transfers during Qualifiers

It has come to our attention that teams are attempting to make transfers beyond the first stage of the qualifiers, as such we would like to issue a clarification of the rules regarding transfers during the qualifiers - to issue this we will be using rule 7.2.

“League Administration can add further clarification to existing rules if deemed necessary. If League Administration is required to process a case that is not covered by any of the existing rules, it can add new rules throughout a league/tournament to cover these scenarios. Once a decision has been made by LA, they must supply both parties involved in the case with an explanation showing how they came to their decision, as well what rules were invoked.”

Ultimately, the reason why the regular season (and by extension the playoffs) have a transfer deadline is to stop teams progressing to the playoffs, then cannibalising another team to load up and bolster their chances of going on an extended playoff run. It’s unfair to other teams that finalised their roster well in advance, and so we have had a transfer deadline for as long as tournaments have been run here.

Qualifiers are relatively new and as a quirk of them being categorised as part of the season (and regular season at that), they haven’t had a clearly communicated transfer deadline – until now. Going forward, teams will only be able to make player acquisitions in stage 1 of the qualifiers (with the usual transfer restrictions remaining in place), meaning that a team may bring players in early-on to boost their chances, but once they progress to the next stage – whether that be a secondary group stage (see: Pro Qualifiers going on at the moment), or an outright playoff style series (see: Elite qualifiers) – they will no longer be able to add players.

This clarification maintains the competitive integrity of the qualifiers and we believe that the vast majority of teams have been sticking to it unofficially, we just wanted to codify it and make sure that the structure of the qualifiers cannot be gamed or abused in this way.