Despite the World Championships being in full swing with the upcoming semi-finals, the League of Legends transfer window continues with quite interesting signings and acquisitions in recent months . While the LEC has monopolized some of the international attention, with the arrivals of KOI and Team Heretics, as well as the KC/Astralis soap opera, it’s the LPL’s turn to drop a bombshell.
RNG on sale
And this does not concern a team of “less importance” (in the sense less titled both locally and internationally), but a historical team in the competitive circuit of League of Legends: Royal Never Give Up. The team appeared for the first time on the international scene in 2013, and has to its credit 2 lost Worlds finals, and two victories at the MSI. The team would be for sale, and could be bought by a giant among Chinese companies. However, one of the closures of the takeover would be to keep the name of the team, a certain part of the executives, as well as the place where they play and train.
Reminder: one of the conditions for joining the LPL was that the teams have access to or have a place built where they could receive the public and play their matches, on a home/away system. So far, only 4 teams have managed to fulfill this commitment: LNG, LGD, V5 and WE, but the others are all working on their projects.
Tik-Tok as a potential buyer?
As reported “LoLContextChan “, the account responsible for bringing news from China to the West, RNG would go on sale with an initial price of 200 million yuan is around €27.7 million. A place in the LEC costs between 30 and 50 million euros, so it seems that the price of the RNG spot is a bargain. We still have to be careful about this term, because we have no idea of the other possible clauses of the contract (such as, for example, finishing building an esports stadium which would increase the bill well beyond the initial amount).
It is currently Bytedance, the company that owns Tiktok, which would lead the bidding process among other large landowners. However, the RNG name itself will not change , only the name of the company that bought the team will be added (like RNG Tik-Tok). While it might seem like an unexpected move, more and more companies are getting fully into the competitive League of Legends circuit. Weibo or Bilibili are other important companies to have entered LPL, so it’s no surprise to see Tik-Tok taking an interest in them as well. However, their role could just be limited to that of intermediaries in the process, information on their real involvement being rather vague.