The streamer who spent $1M on an esports team says esports is a terrible business: ‘Everyone is losing a lot of money’

pcgamer.com:

Jeremy Wang, better known to the internet as streamer and esports team owner Disguised Toast, has shared some incisive thoughts on why «the esports industry is one of the worst things you can get into.» And it's not because his team sucks, although it does: It's because in spite of all the millions of dollars that have been poured into it, there's no money to be made.

Disguised Toast announced in January that he'd spent $500,000 to found a Valorant pro team called DSG. It did not go well: By May, the team was on an0-7 run and Disguised Toast was having serious second thoughts. Despite that experience, he purchased a League of Legends pro team in May, intending to compete in the North American Challengers League. But that venture also got off to an inauspicious start, as Riot unexpectedly gutted the NACL and LCS pros threatened to go on strike.

https://t.co/IwiDxw0iDA pic.twitter.com/3HfWquuvkKMay 31, 2023

That potential walkout happened when LCS teams were allowed by Riot to drop their second-tier challenger league rosters: Nearly all of the organizations in the LCS did so as a cost-saving measure, which put dozens of players and coaches out of work. It was an ugly moment for the LCS but it also happened just weeks after Activision acknowledged in an SEC filing that the Overwatch League and Call of Duty League are facing challenges «which are negatively impacting the operations and, potentially, the longevity of the leagues under the current business model,» and that those challenges may ultimately prove intractable.

Collectively, the seemingly-sudden troubles in two of the biggest esports leagues in operation pointed toward serious sustainability problems for pro esports in general. Both Activision and Riot quickly