Gen.G CEO offers grim prediction on esports future: \u201cI fear the worst\u201d Arnold HurIn an Ask Me Anything on the League of Legends subreddit, Gen.G CEO, Arnold Hur, was asked about his confidence in the League of Legends esports leagues in North America and South Korea financially and said he is \u201cextremely concerned.\u201d Hur, who was promoted to CEO of Gen.G in 2021 and has worked for the organization since 2017, is a veteran of the esports industry. In the Reddit AMA, he was asked for his thoughts on whether the League of Legends Champions Korea league will have the same fate as the League Championship Series in terms of financial concerns and how he feels about sponsors leaving the Korean league. Hur answered with a grim prediction for the esports space, revealing that the average cost for the top players in the LCK are increasing every year and sponsorship money does not come close to covering their salaries. \u201cI\u2019ve been saying the esports winter is coming but even I didn\u2019t think it would be this cold. Now I\u2019ve changed my forecast and think 30%+ of esports teams worldwide won\u2019t make it the next 2 years,\u201d Hur said. Gen.G CEO explains why the esports winter will decimate orgs Hur further explained that he thinks leagues that rely on media and brand sponsorships won\u2019t survive and publishers finding other ways to create revenue for their events and teams is key. Hur also pointed to the world\u2019s current financial woes as more brands are cutting costs and turning away from marketing. \u201cIn an environment where every major consumer brand is cutting marketing costs, experimental esports marketing sponsorships are at risk of being the first to be cut. If the publisher, the LCK, teams, players don\u2019t take the risks now to fix the model, I fear the worst,\u201d the Gen.G CEO said. The executive did share some hopeful thoughts, however, saying that everyone involved in esports understands the current business model doesn\u2019t work for teams or leagues and they should figure out a way for everyone to profit. \u201cMost of our fans understand that everyone needs to embrace the sports ENTERTAINMENT side and find new commercial opportunities if we are going to stay relevant vs bigger regions,\u201d Hur said. For some organizations, the esports winter is already here. eUnited, an esports organization established in 2016, is reportedly dead in the water with its CEO as the only employee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gen.G CEO offers grim prediction on esports future: \u201cI fear the worst\u201d Arnold HurIn an Ask Me Anything on the League of Legends subreddit, Gen.G CEO, Arnold Hur, was asked about his confidence in the League of Legends esports leagues in North America and South Korea financially and said he is \u201cextremely concerned.\u201d Hur, who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66631\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}