No matter how many championships Faker wins, it can't save the LCK! Riot officially announces: prize money for Korean teams will be canceled.

Hello to all LPL viewers and League of Legends summoners, this is Tianxia Game Report.

This year, both the LPL and LCK regions will officially start their S16 league journeys tomorrow, with both regions making certain adjustments to their formats for the first split.

Editor

During this process, a piece of news from Riot has attracted widespread attention.

Riot officially announces the cancellation of LCK league prize money.

Here’s the situation: Riot recently released an official statement that starting in 2026, it will cancel the regional prize pools from the Global Revenue Pool (GRP), concentrating funds into areas with deeper and more impactful influence. For a long time, players' personal earnings have been relatively low due to prize pool distributions, even though the total investment across regions has been quite substantial.

Riot’s goal is to improve fund management strategies in order to more effectively promote the long-term development of the ecosystem.

In short, Riot has a global revenue sharing prize pool that distributes prize money for various competitions, including league and international tournament prizes, but now Riot has decided to eliminate the regional prize pools.

Riot’s regional prize pools include the Korean and Western regions, but it’s important to note that the LPL is not part of this since it is not operated by Riot directly. Instead, Tencent’s subsidiary, TENGG Sports, manages the LPL with relatively autonomous decision-making power.

Therefore, many viewers jokingly suggest that LCK teams should join the LPL because the LPL’s competition intensity is lower than LCK’s, so playing in the LPL could earn them more prize money.

No matter how many championships Faker wins, he can’t save the LCK.

In fact, even before Riot’s announcement, the operational difficulties in the LCK region have been ongoing. The LCK has been suffering losses for years, and many LCK teams face immense pressure due to poor results, including many well-known top-tier LCK teams that have had to cut expenses.

This dilemma in the LCK cannot be solved by Faker winning championships, which differs from the LPL. The LPL market is larger, and even if the LPL fails to achieve good results for several years, winning a single world championship can immediately improve the situation. Although it can’t compare to the peak of S8 and S9, it still significantly enhances the LPL environment and increases earnings.

An even more extreme point is that despite T1 winning three consecutive championships, they lost a champion player in two transfer windows. During these periods of controversy, T1 was actually the party reluctant to offer higher salaries for contract renewals. At the end of last year, HLE offered Zeus a better deal, and this year Gumayusi left. Reports show Peyz’s value was very low, yet T1 signed him to a three-year contract.

Riot’s core strategy may be to subsidize lower-tier teams.

Let’s analyze the LCK prize money carefully. According to foreign media, the total prize pool that LCK loses is about $385,000. Historically, the prize money for LCK champions has not been as high as expected, roughly equivalent to just over one million RMB.

In fact, last year’s first split in the LCK had a champion title but no prize money, whereas the LPL’s first split winner was called the “winner” without a champion title but did receive prize money.

I personally believe that canceling the prize money should not affect top teams much. Riot’s core strategy or true intention might be to use this prize money to support lower-ranked, weaker teams, enabling them to receive higher dividends and thus easing the pressure on LCK teams.

Foreign media had previously reported similar news that Riot would provide fixed financial support to LCK clubs to stabilize their income. Therefore, this prize money cancellation might correspond to that fixed subsidy model. Overall, this could be beneficial for the LCK, although top teams might experience some losses.

Another reason why the LCK performs well but still suffers losses is, first, the market size is not large enough, and second, the LCK has won too many championships, making it difficult to stimulate the market anew. T1’s earnings from three consecutive championships have also gradually diminished and are not as high as expected.