EPTOn October 29 2026 06:32 Balnazza wrote:
There has been a clear shift towards more sustainable business models in recent years, considering the economical difficulties (world economy always impacts Esports aswell, since Esports is so heavily relying on sponsoring) and the ongoing exit of US private equity firms who realise that they will not get their gigantic investments back any time soon.
I believe Riot was the first that started to create a path to more sustainability, which came however at a chunky decrease of teams and regions over the years. And while I believe that Tier1 LoL is quite sustainable, it already gets tricky in T2 or even T3.
In Valorant, they probably try to go a different route, but with the same goal.
As for other games:
CS2 is solely financed through the Major. A lot of owners and managers explained that you essentially sink round about ~60K into a team with the prospect of getting a cashout when you reach the Major. However, Valve changed the formular how sticker money is given out, which drastically decreased the financial viability of a lot of orgs. The costs to reach the Major haven't gone down, but the payout got cut quite substantially.
DotA2 has essentially stopped being viable except for the big teams since Valve closed down the Pro Circuit.
Call of Duty apparently also started to change their payout, making the League less viable.
Overall:
Esports is in a very awkward phase, were the interest is clearly there, but the monetization is just not on par. And because of investors who thought they could hit it big, the entire economy is inflated, with salaries being often too big.
That sadly also explains why no one can just decide to not go to the EWC or try to make it into the EWC Partner Program. Getting millions of dollars for that is a payout no organisation can deny. Which might open up another problem in the next few years, because the PIF is starting to get much more conservative with their money, especially with the current crisis in the region. Should they decide to pull the plug on the entire EWC program, Esports as a whole might crash in a way it did in 2008, since this time it would also affect ESL.
(that scenario isn't impossible, but in my opinion not likely. Esports is still a growth market with a good chance to connect to a young and actually quite diverse part of the population, which is exactly the kind of people the PIF wants to cater to)
There has been a clear shift towards more sustainable business models in recent years, considering the economical difficulties (world economy always impacts Esports aswell, since Esports is so heavily relying on sponsoring) and the ongoing exit of US private equity firms who realise that they will not get their gigantic investments back any time soon.
I believe Riot was the first that started to create a path to more sustainability, which came however at a chunky decrease of teams and regions over the years. And while I believe that Tier1 LoL is quite sustainable, it already gets tricky in T2 or even T3.
In Valorant, they probably try to go a different route, but with the same goal.
As for other games:
CS2 is solely financed through the Major. A lot of owners and managers explained that you essentially sink round about ~60K into a team with the prospect of getting a cashout when you reach the Major. However, Valve changed the formular how sticker money is given out, which drastically decreased the financial viability of a lot of orgs. The costs to reach the Major haven't gone down, but the payout got cut quite substantially.
DotA2 has essentially stopped being viable except for the big teams since Valve closed down the Pro Circuit.
Call of Duty apparently also started to change their payout, making the League less viable.
Overall:
Esports is in a very awkward phase, were the interest is clearly there, but the monetization is just not on par. And because of investors who thought they could hit it big, the entire economy is inflated, with salaries being often too big.
That sadly also explains why no one can just decide to not go to the EWC or try to make it into the EWC Partner Program. Getting millions of dollars for that is a payout no organisation can deny. Which might open up another problem in the next few years, because the PIF is starting to get much more conservative with their money, especially with the current crisis in the region. Should they decide to pull the plug on the entire EWC program, Esports as a whole might crash in a way it did in 2008, since this time it would also affect ESL.
(that scenario isn't impossible, but in my opinion not likely. Esports is still a growth market with a good chance to connect to a young and actually quite diverse part of the population, which is exactly the kind of people the PIF wants to cater to)
I think the big factor is that, no video games have gotten close to chess or traditional sport.
Too many different competitions coming to play, and players "move on" to another one.
At the end of the day, each esport scene for a new game is fairly big, and has a certain timeframe in mind.
It is too fragile to develope into a proper sport scene.
as someone working in the traditional sport sector, it really opens my eyes how underdeveloped the epsort scene is.
