Professionals move from one Kanaliiga team to another
Telia supporters at the Kanaliiga CS2 Season 3 Enabled by Supermetrics LAN finals
A black-metal-style logo caught the eye a few years ago, when Kanaliiga’s current chair, Jari “enzoj” Haikonen, wandered onto the website of Polar Squad, then a Kanaliiga sponsor. The company’s image and humour felt like his kind of thing, and eventually Jari applied for an open position. He has now worked at Polar Squad for several years, and job satisfaction has stayed high. Kanaliiga did more than start the recruitment: playing also shapes how he connects with the work community.
“I do consulting work fully remotely, so in practice I hardly ever see my colleagues. Kanaliiga has made it easy to get to know people at work and to find something to do together. These days we play under the Sevendos group of companies, so the circle of colleagues I game with has grown even wider.”
Work topics often come up between games too, and especially as a newcomer, Haikonen says he picked up a lot of the workplace’s unwritten, tacit knowledge in those conversations.
With remote work now common in IT, Kanaliiga seems to matter even more for workplace community. Joona “mait0mies” Hämäläinen played several seasons for his previous employer, Tahto. When it was time to look for a new job, he says the first thing he did was go through the job ads of other companies playing in Kanaliiga.
“A Kanaliiga team isn’t the top priority when you look for a new job, but I definitely see it as a big plus. In my previous job I mostly worked alone. Kanaliiga brought a sense of community and long-term friends from work. Even though I have changed jobs, I still spend time with my old colleagues outside gaming too.”
Hämäläinen’s job hunt turned into headhunting when a gaming friend from Abloy kept messaging him about an open role that matched his CV and skills. He had also got to know Abloy’s Kanaliiga players by gaming with them in his free time. In the end he applied, got the job, and his league career continued in Abloy’s PUBG team.
“Even before I joined Abloy, Kanaliiga gave me good ideas about where to apply. Many players I knew also tipped me off about openings at their own employers.”
Joni “FLAMEKKi” Vatanen is a well-known name in the Finnish gaming and PUBG scene, and an accomplished PC builder with the official title of “Build Wizard”. These days he plays and works for the Finnish Defence Forces (PV).
“While playing on the Kanamixes (voice channels on the Kanaliiga PUBG Discord where league players can play together outside tournaments), Thoun1 from Valtori’s team kept promoting the valtiolle.fi government jobs site. I ended up setting a job alert for my field and applied for public-sector and Defence Forces jobs. I got an interview, and in the end the job too.”
Vatanen also knows the players on his PUBG team from the broadcasts and the Discord server, and has met some of them in person at a Kanaliiga PUBG meetup in Turku. He finds playing in Kanaliiga a nice counterbalance to work, even though his teammates work in different parts of the organisation. League games are also an easy, light topic of conversation at work; the subject even came up in his job interview.
“Before I chose the Defence Forces, I also had another job offer on the table. While applying, I messaged someone I knew from Kanaliiga who plays for that employer to ask about the job. He pointed me straight to the person in charge of recruiting, who also played in Kanaliiga. I ended up working elsewhere, but it was exciting that you can reach professionals from so many fields through Kanaliiga.”
Finnish telecom operators are well represented in Kanaliiga; Elisa Esports, for example, is one of Kanaliiga’s main sponsors in 2025. All the biggest operators also have teams in Kanaliiga tournaments, in several games.
Tatu “Tatzeu” Ahlqvist has worked at both Elisa and Telia and played in Kanaliiga teams for both. His Kanaliiga career started while he was at Elisa. In 2023 he was out of work, which gave him a chance to focus on other things for a while and think about what kind of work would match his interests.
Back in 2022, Ahlqvist had got to know Pauli “zepsu” Raitanen through Kanaliiga; Raitanen now also sits on the league’s board. Raitanen works at Telia, and later in 2023 he tipped Ahlqvist off about an open position there.
“I asked Raitanen about the role, and it turned out that two of my classmates from university of applied sciences would be my colleagues in that job. I decided to apply for a job that matched my interests anyway. This November I will have been at Telia for two years, both at work and in the Kanaliiga team.”
The players’ recruitment stories show how much gaming matters for professional networking, as well as for hobbies and free time. Almost everyone interviewed felt that even if a Kanaliiga team is not the top priority at work or when changing jobs, it opens unique ways into the work community. At the very least, playing in the league gives you something easy to talk about at the office coffee table or in the informal moments of remote meetings.
According to Kanaliiga’s 2025 user survey, video games reach a significant number of employees who otherwise rarely take part in workplace leisure activities.
Teams recruiting players inside companies have their own funny stories, too. Players have been recruited from Twitch chat and, by Roope “Fettis” Gröhn, from the legendary coffee machine at Elisa’s office. Legend has it that Gröhn is personally responsible for bringing three Elisa PUBG teams into Kanaliiga.
“Kanaliiga also gives jobseekers an easy way to get to know potential employers. If a company has teams in Kanaliiga, that is a positive sign of the workplace atmosphere, at least for me. Kanaliiga has also made it easy to reach people at a new workplace and get into the work community.” – Jari “enzoj” Haikonen
This article was made through an open interview call on Kanaliiga’s Discord. The sources are the interviewees’ answers and Kanaliiga’s “Big User Survey 2025”. The full survey results will be published later.