Hey Brocco! Always a pleasure, and thanks for the question man. If players want specific protections from this type of situation to me, the solution seems simple, yet difficult to achieve in reality: they need to negotiate protections into their agreements (or, if they don't have written contracts, demand that one be drafted that includes the necessary language). The way I see it, there are three types of provisions that could specifically address the rights/responsibilities of the parties with respect to team sales (there are probably others, this is just off the top of my head). The contracts could:

• Give players the absolute right to veto a potential sale. If any player says no, it doesn't go through;

• Require some % of starting players to vote in favor of the sale for it to go through (2/4 or 3/4 seem to be the most likely scenarios); or

• Give players no right to impact whether the team/spot is sold, but specifically allocate rights to a certain % of the purchase price.

These options go from most restrictive to least; whether this type of language gets into a contract, and which version is selected, ultimately depends on how much leverage the player has in a particular situation. Obviously the most famous/best players have more leverage than a fringe-level pro player.

I'd also add that the obvious elephant in the room is the age/experience of your typical pro COD player. It's the youngest scene of any esport, and its not like the other scenes are full up with players that have legal knowledge or experience reading/negotiating contracts. Also, the same can be said of many team owners (this tends to get overlooked a lot imo). This situation simply isn't going to improve until there is more awareness of these issues, how they can be fixed, and the desperate need to have people with experience (lawyers, agents, business people, whoever) assisting on both sides of these deals.