zonic reveals why he left Vitality: They wanted to cut my salary with 60-70%
The Danish coach wanted to extend his contract with the French organization but was met with a dramatic pay cut demand.
In an interview with Duncan "Thorin" Shields, Danny "zonic" Sørensen revealed what went wrong in the negotiations between him and Team Vitality after the BLAST.tv Major win in May 2023.
- My first priority was to extend with Team Vitality. But overall including prize pools and all it was a 60-70% salary reduction from what I had. I informed them that I was willing to go down in salary, but not that much. I knew that there were issues [financially], and I informed my agent that I was willing to go down 20% despite winning the Major, that was the only task that I was given, zonic says in the third and final episode of “Reflections with zonic”.
The five-time Major winning coach says that he has nothing bad to say about Team Vitality, but that he also found their offer disrespectful. Especially with the already two pay cuts he had taken during his time at Vitality. Paycuts that allowed the organization to bring in Lotan "Spinx" Giladi and Sportspsychologist Lars Robl on a full-time salary.
- It was a bit harsh the way they started the negotiations. It was a little bit disrespectful in my opinion. After some time, they encouraged me to look elsewhere
Danny "zonic" Sørensen ended up choosing Team Falcons as his next project.
- I got a lot of offers to be honest. Four or five teams. Some of them were established, and then Falcons who were not established. What attracted me about Falcons was definitely the whole thing about “Here you have the keys, win us a Major. How you do it, is fine.”
You can see the third episode of “Relections with zonic” down below. The above-mentioned segment you can find at 41:14.
