Manager Li looked confused: “Mr. Pei, did I miss some procedure? Weren’t we supposed to have a detailed discussion today? Neither of us has expressed our interests and demands yet. Shouldn’t we communicate fully before making a decision?”

Pei Qian was taken aback: “Huh? Has everyone not thought this through yet? I thought the news about all the clubs jointly boycotting the GPL league was true!”

Manager Li felt dizzy.

It was true, but we never said we wanted to sell the GOG division!

That was just to create some public pressure on you. Public pressure, understand?

But now, Mr. Pei just assumed all clubs wanted to sell their GOG divisions?

With this question, Manager Li was left speechless.

Manager Li and the others had joined forces to create public opinion, which was just to gain some negotiating leverage, to let Mr. Pei see that not all clubs were planning to take over, crushing Mr. Pei’s idea of buying all the clubs’ GOG divisions himself.

But unexpectedly, Mr. Pei wasn’t moved at all and directly pushed the topic to the most extreme direction.

Both sides suddenly had no room for negotiation!

So the ball was back in the clubs’ court.

To say they hadn’t planned to sell their GOG divisions, that they just wanted equal negotiations to gain concessions in cooperation terms?

That wouldn’t work. Wouldn’t that be like giving in? That would put them right in Mr. Pei’s palm!

But if they didn’t say that, wouldn’t they have to immediately raise their hands and sell their GOG divisions?

The managers of several clubs looked at each other, not knowing what to do.

When they had written the script earlier, they hadn’t anticipated things would develop this way. Mr. Pei wasn’t following the script, so what about them?

Pei Qian, watching these club managers all keep silent, was getting a bit anxious himself.

What was going on?

Weren’t they supposed to sell their GOG divisions to me?

Why weren’t they saying anything?

Hurry up and sell them to me so I can hold onto them and lose money!

The meeting room fell into an awkward silence. Pei Qian cleared his throat: “Manager Li, you seem to have the strongest reaction. Let’s do this—why don’t you state your position first? Sell or don’t sell, give a straight answer.”

Manager Li’s mouth twitched slightly.

Mr. Pei had put him right in the spotlight!

The key was that he had organized this event. If he said they wouldn’t sell, the other clubs weren’t stupid, they definitely wouldn’t sell either. Wouldn’t that end with Mr. Pei’s complete victory? What would be left to discuss?

But it was also unrealistic to ask Manager Li to directly sell the GOG division, because he didn’t have that authority. Whether to sell the club or not was ultimately the owner’s decision.

What to do?

Manager Li’s mind spun rapidly, and he quickly came up with a solution.

He immediately put on a smiling face, looked around at the other club managers, then looked at Mr. Pei, displaying an air of calm confidence, as if everything was under control.

“Mr. Pei, let me clarify something first. We are still approaching this with an attitude of equal negotiation to seek continued cooperation. A lose-lose situation has never been our goal.”

“Besides, even if we were to sell, we couldn’t just deal directly with the officials, right? In that case, our interests wouldn’t be guaranteed.”

“For example, if a third party offered a higher price than Tenda, and Tenda bought our GOG divisions at a lower price, that wouldn’t be reasonable, would it? Our interests would suffer losses.”

“So I think we should seek third-party transactions first, with the highest bidder winning, and it must exceed our psychological bottom line before we can decide to sell.”

Pei Qian’s eyes lit up.

Exceed your psychological bottom line?

That meant they wanted to raise the price, right?

That’s great!

Pei Qian immediately nodded: “No problem. Here’s what we’ll do: each of you state your psychological bottom line, and we’ll hold an auction. The entire GOG division and GPL spot will be sold as a package.”

“What’s your psychological bottom line? Please speak freely. Zhang Yuan, take some notes.”

Zhang Yuan nodded and took out a pen and paper to make simple records.

The other club managers looked at Manager Li and instantly understood his intention.

The plan hadn’t changed; they had just moved ahead to the next stage earlier than expected.

Previously, everyone’s idea was to create public pressure first, to make Mr. Pei back down. If Mr. Pei didn’t back down, they would pretend to sell their GOG divisions, letting Mr. Pei see the reality that “no one would take over.” Then Mr. Pei would naturally compromise.

They had already agreed to uniformly raise prices by 20%. For example, if their GOG division was worth 5 million, they would ask for 6 million; if it was worth 10 million, they would ask for 12 million.

Moreover, the original valuation itself was already inflated, including comprehensive considerations such as player value, brand effect, and other factors.

In the past few days, Manager Li had already communicated with other clubs, and those clubs wouldn’t get involved.

So, this price should be one that no one would accept.

At that point, Mr. Pei would either have to bite the bullet and dig into his pocket to buy all these GOG divisions at a high price, or he would have to take a step back and negotiate cooperation with the clubs.

Also, Mr. Pei wasn’t conducting a silent auction this time—it was an open auction.

These clubs didn’t want to sell their GOG divisions, so as long as one club raised its price, the other clubs would follow suit, making the prices even more inflated.

Manager Li smiled slightly: “The psychological bottom line for SUG Club’s GOG division is 11 million.”

The other club managers also stated their asking prices.

The highest, of course, were the H4 Club and EK Club, which had just won the championship and runner-up positions at the Global Invitational. Their asking prices reached 13 million and 12.5 million respectively.

The prices from the various clubs were generally quite even.

This was normal because when Mr. Pei sold the DGE Club players, they were evenly distributed among the various clubs.

With similar strengths and operating costs across the clubs, there naturally wouldn’t be too much difference in price.

Soon, all the clubs had stated their expected prices, and every one of them had added a premium.

After all, these clubs’ GOG division training facilities were all rented, without many fixed assets. The most valuable things were the players, and their transfer fees were all publicly known—no secret to Mr. Pei.

The e-sports industry was just getting started and wasn’t that hot yet, so clubs naturally couldn’t sell for too high a price.

Getting to the current price was already quite high in the club managers’ view.

Pei Qian frowned deeply. After pondering for a moment, he said: “Everyone, are you sure you don’t want to add a bit more?”

“Selling a GOG division for just ten million, isn’t that a bit of a loss?”

Pei Qian wished these people would raise their prices even more.

The more you raise your prices, the more money I can spend!

None of the club managers responded.

Because they didn’t quite understand whether Mr. Pei’s words were sarcastic or not…

Was he complaining that we’re selling too expensively?

Was he being sarcastic?

But looking at Mr. Pei’s sincere expression, there didn’t seem to be any sarcastic intent.

Everyone was confused by “Mr. Pei’s acting skills” and didn’t know how to respond for a moment.

Seeing Mr. Pei frown while saying these words, Manager Li felt a bit smug.

Seeing the specific asking prices, you can’t accept it, can you?

Mr. Pei’s words were sarcastic. On the surface, he was asking if we wanted to sell for even more, but actually, he was dissatisfied with our sky-high prices!

This must be sarcasm, it must be an angry remark!

Manager Li’s lips curled upward as he cleared his throat: “Mr. Pei, this is our psychological price point. It is indeed a bit higher than our investment costs. I think this is reasonable—after all, we’ve been running GOG divisions for so long, we can’t have been working for nothing, right?”

Hearing Manager Li’s words, Pei Qian instantly understood that his words had been misinterpreted again.

Forget it, no need to explain. The more he explained, the bigger the problem would get.

Now the asking prices of these clubs add up to nearly 100 million.

Pei Qian pondered. If these clubs wanted to sell, there would be buyers. Not to mention others, Mr. Li might just team up with other investors to buy a club for fun.

So, counting on no one taking over wasn’t realistic. At most, not all clubs would be taken over.

With six or seven clubs left that no one wanted, Mr. Pei could dig into his pocket to buy them. Tenda’s money, if squeezed a little, would not be a problem, and it wouldn’t cause issues with the funding chain that would affect the departments currently in development.

So be it then. Cheaper is cheaper.

Pei Qian nodded: “Fine, we’ll go with this price and look for third parties to negotiate, letting everyone bid freely!”

“But let me be clear about one thing: since we’ve agreed to sell and given a psychological price point, you can’t go back on your word later.”

“Let’s sign an intermediary agency contract first. Tenda guarantees to sell your GOG divisions at your expected price, no lower, only higher. If they can’t be sold, Tenda will cover the bottom. Conversely, if the price meets expectations, no one can say they won’t sell anymore.”

“If there’s a breach of contract, we’ll each bear the responsibility for breach of contract and pay the liquidated damages.”

This was like doing business: the seller had already quoted a price, but when the buyer wanted to buy, the seller backed out. That wouldn’t work.

Pei Qian feared these clubs might back out later, which would mean he couldn’t spend his money, right?

So, signing an agency contract was mainly to ensure that when Tenda covered the bottom to buy these clubs, they wouldn’t renege.

For Pei Qian, once this contract was signed, Tenda would have to spend money to buy clubs as a bottom line, or pay liquidated damages to each club if they didn’t cover the bottom. Either way, they could spend money—wouldn’t that be wonderful?

When they heard about signing a contract, the club managers became hesitant again.

Manager Li coughed twice: “Um, Mr. Pei, could I call my boss now to ask for instructions?”

Pei Qian nodded: “Of course.”

The club managers immediately scattered, finding corners to call their bosses.

Manager Li went to the garden outside the villa and dialed the club owner’s number.

“Hello? Boss, I’m reporting on the GOG division matter. Mr. Pei now wants us to sign a contract…”

“Yes, my asking price is 11 million. Even if we sell it, after deducting player values, GPL spot, operating costs, and so on, we would still profit quite a bit, definitely not at a loss.”

“The GPL spot? If we want it, we can buy it again. The spot itself isn’t worth much. How many clubs are there playing in total in the country right now?”

“Yes, boss, the GPL spot shouldn’t be very expensive because Tenda is now building an e-sports ecosystem, allowing players to form their teams and start from the Slackin’ Internet Café’s online competition. Since that’s the case, we just need to buy an internet café team that has the strength to make it to GPL.”

“Right, in the worst case, we sell for 11 million, then spend a little money to buy a new team back. We definitely wouldn’t lose out.”

“Alright, boss, so I’ll sign it then.”

Manager Li hung up the phone, feeling much more confident.

Thinking about it, signing this contract would at most mean making a bit less profit—they shouldn’t lose money.

Player values and club costs were fixed, and the premium was already high enough.

They had run a GOG division like a hobby, accepted sponsorships, had some endorsements, and had already earned back a part of their investment. Now selling it with a premium would easily bring in a decent profit.

Besides, even if they sold now, they could always come back whenever they wanted.

Currently, the entry qualifications for most e-sports leagues in the world were very loose. The reason was simple: there weren’t many participants.

With only a few clubs in total, no one would compete for league spots.

If an internet café team made it to the GPL league, how could they operate on their own? Wouldn’t they still need to rely on a club? These internet café teams could be bought with a little money whenever desired.

At that time, SUG would naturally buy an internet café team that had earned a GPL spot. Mr. Pei might even become the sucker who would have to warmly welcome the SUG club back!