Is Evil Geniuses Over Spending?
It’s been a crazy busy past couple of months for Evil Geniuses. The org had been struggling for years outside of Dota2 until suddenly getting picked up by investment firm Peak6 in May. Evil Geniuses has since gone on a spending spree snapping up teams across the industry.
Since September, the org has picked up NRG’s CSGO roster for a rumored $3 million and has also returned to League of Legends after buying out Echo Fox’s spot following their forced sale by Riot in July. That spot went for an astronomical $30-$40 million, possibly the highest buyout ever for an org, leading many to voice concern over just how much money Evil Geniuses really has.
Sugar Daddy PEAK6
PEAK6 is a vastly wealthy investment firm and has a variety of sub company’s including two wealth management firms and the National Flood Service.
Evil Geniuses seems keenly focused on becoming a big player in the esports industry, and clearly sees Evil Geniuses as their vector for which to do so.
The company isn’t just content with owning a team, they want the best they can get and have already shown between the teams and players they’ve picked up that they mean business.
The org picked up LCS MVP Svenskeren and a good chunk of the Cloud9 LCS and Academy rosters for their new squad, along with former Worlds champion Bang from 100 Thieves.
Given that a player like Huni can get a $2.3 million two-year contract extension after what was arguably a middling year, the contracts for players who made Worlds like Sven and Zeyzal, also from Cloud9, must be astronomical in size, and could see EG’s total spending for the past two months top over $50 million.
The org also signed three new Dota2 players to its roster, including Abeezy and Fly, and appears to be preparing for a TI-winning run next year through OG.
The major concern for many analysts is if this massive spending spree will come back to bite the org or, worse, it drives player and team prices up further and further, pushing more small orgs out of the industry as has been happening the past year.
Especially for scenes with a lot of free-floating teams like Dota2 and CSGO, having a juggernaut spend enormous sums on player contracts could make running a traditional small-scale team neigh impossible for many, tightening the ship and giving less roster spots for players to finds homes on as the number of teams declines.
It’s too early to say what impact this major spending spree by Evil Geniuses is for sure going to have, but if one thing is for certain, it’s that one of esports oldest brands is back and ready to play.
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