The North American organisation H2K has published a letter to their website directed at RIOT and the European League of Legends Championship Series (EU LCS) claiming business losses and unfair partnership.
The letter starts off cordially enough with the organisation sharing praises of the players, the game and the league. It gets to the sad part quickly enough though:
Sadly, however, from a business perspective we consider it irrational to continue in a partnership where our partner earns very substantial annual profits while, by contrast, we incur annual losses of over €1,000,000. The financial arrangement between RIOT and the teams is unfortunately backward and upside down. The fact is that most League of Legends teams lose money.
The gist of the letter is that the event wouldn’t really be the event it is without teams like H2K who invest time, effort and heaps of marketing for another company (namely, RIOT). Given the cost to the team, H2K will not be involved in EU LCS past the 2017 season.
The caveat is that H2K is willing to be involved in the league again if RIOT recognises the contributions of teams and provides compensation of at least €850,000 to each team involved.
Images: H2K
H2K’s Letter to the EU LCS Community
