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Astralis report shows it lost $8.5M million through 2020

Mar 16, 2021

Reading time: 2 min

The Astralis Group has unveiled its annual financial results, with the organization producing an $8.5 million operational loss over the past year.

The Astralis Group, which field rosters in popular titles including Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and League of Legends, has to make its yearly revenue public as it is a public company. In the past year, the team earned around $8.26M with the lion’s share coming from its CSGO team. The four-time major winners brought in $6M in revenue, with the LoL team only earning $1.3M for Astralis.

While this revenue seems high, it doesn’t cover operational costs. Astralis Group reported an $8.5M loss over the same period of time. The lack of LAN competition and worldwide economic stagnation impacted the organization’s finances.

Astralis Group has invested in several franchised leagues. In the past, it has signed long-term deals to compete in the ESL Pro League, BLAST Premier, and the League of Legends European Championship. These franchising agreements give Astralis a part of the revenue from these events, and the financial report points towards those agreements as the way forward.

“[These leagues] have all shown significant progress and sustainability regarding funds distributed to the teams, the interest from new teams in buying into the leagues, and the transactions of rights that have already taken place for amounts far above original value. On this basis, we believe that our three franchise slots and participation rights are significantly underrepresented in our accounts,” Astralis said.

“In the context of a global crisis and unprecedented challenges, I am extremely proud of what has been accomplished by our organization and the current development of our business.”

CEO Anders Hørsholt on the Annual Report for 2020.https://t.co/iKf6NGuTjf

— Astralis Group (@astralisgroup) March 15, 2021

How does Astralis make money?

Astralis makes the most the money from sponsorship agreements. More than half of its revenue is generated by deals with advertising companies including Garmin, Universal Music, Hummel, and Lunar. Prize money and league revenue only amount to 26% of the Astralis’ earnings.

Astralis had a few things go their way in the past year, with the transfer of CSGO player Patrick “es3tag” Hansen being signed after his contract with Heroic expired, only to be sold to Cloud9 in a $2.1M deal.