Information about the contract values and salaries of League of Legends players is something that very few organizations want to disclose. Aside from legal and paperwork reasons, keeping salary information confidential is also a way for teams to prevent other competitors from poaching their players.
However, recently, Mr. Seo Su-Kil, CEO of Afreeca – the parent company of the League of Legends team Afreeca Freecs, surprisingly shared detailed information about the salary of player Kim “Kiin” Gi-in – the top laner of AF.
Specifically, Mr. Seo shared in a speech before the media that the salary Kiin receives is “5 times my CEO salary,” with a value of 4.5 billion won for a 3-year contract, equivalent to about 87 billion VND.
Thus, each year, Kiin will receive 1.5 billion in salary from Afreeca, amounting to 29 billion VND and 1.25 million USD. As the number one star of Afreeca Freecs currently, Kiin is naturally the highest-paid player on this team.
Interestingly, two years ago, South Korean media also sensationalized information about Faker’s salary – a player believed to be the highest-paid in the world of League of Legends. Naver and several other news outlets confirmed that Faker’s salary at T1 (at the time in 2018) was 3 billion won/year, which is double that of Kiin currently.
In reality, this discrepancy is entirely understandable, because if Faker is the highest-paid player in the world, then T1 must spend more than the contracts that Chinese teams offer their players.
Meanwhile, Kiin’s salary is also said to be competitive compared to many players currently competing in China. For instance, Khan – who is playing for FunPlus Phoenix, is reported to earn 2 million USD for a 2-year contract, equivalent to 1 million USD/year, which is still 250,000 USD less than Kiin.
The fact that the CEO of Afreeca disclosed the player’s salary might be due to the organization being confident that it would be difficult for any team in the world to offer a more lucrative deal to lure Kiin away from Afreeca. Additionally, Kiin’s contract with AF was just renewed in 2019, committing him to the team until the end of the 2022 season.
Afreeca Freecs is not a particularly prominent name on the League of Legends map in South Korea, with their best achievement being qualifying for the 2018 World Championship. Additionally, Kiin was also a member of the South Korean National League of Legends team that won a Silver Medal at the 2018 ASIAN Games.