Recently, the LCS region has garnered significant attention from the League of Legends (LoL) community. This all started when LCS players organized a “strike” to protest the decision to eliminate the mandatory rule for developing youth teams by Riot. As a result, the LCS tournament was temporarily postponed for 2 weeks to allow both parties to seek a solution.
However, LCS fans continue to receive bad news as information regarding the enormous losses in this region has been revealed. Specifically, each team in the LCS region incurs annual losses of up to 1 million USD (approximately 23 billion VND). For larger teams with many famous players, these losses are even greater.
This situation stems from the salaries of players and coaches in the LCS becoming excessively high compared to their actual value. Consequently, the amount spent on salaries has consumed up to 100% of the tournament’s revenue. Broadly speaking, since the franchise system was implemented in the LCS, teams have lost between 200-250 million USD (approximately 4.7 trillion – 5.8 trillion VND).
The financial situation is so dire that Counter Logic Gaming (CLG) has proposed paying cash to NRG to take over their LCS team. Therefore, LCS teams have requested that Riot Games eliminate the requirement to develop youth teams to reduce costs. This ultimately led to the unfortunate incident that occurred recently in the LCS tournament.
The figures mentioned above, once made public, have left the League of Legends community reeling. Many are pessimistic to the point of considering the possibility that the LCS tournament may be dissolved due to teams withdrawing en masse because they can no longer bear the enormous losses.