Crazy Raccoon's last sponsorship ends and the club goes sponsor-free

Crazy Raccoon no longer has a sponsor. GALLERIA, a brand that sells PCs and computer equipment in Japan, announced on Monday, August 31, 2026, the end of its partnership with the Japanese esports club, which was the club's last remaining one, Sheep Esports reported on September 2.

The club's own answer came from its owner, Daichi Takano, who replied on X that having no sponsors at all had in fact been his goal, and that he would keep pushing forward on his own path.

The model Sheep Esports describes is a club that lives from what it sells to its own fans, through its events, its stores and its trading cards, rather than from partners.

Sheep Esports, September 2, 2026, from the club's and GALLERIA's posts on X; attendance as reported by the outlet.

How the last partnership ended

The announcement came from both sides on X. GALLERIA posted first; Takano, who is the owner and representative director of the club, replied with his own post.

What ended is a partnership with the club as a whole. Sheep Esports notes that the club will still show two brands, nosh and Scalp D Next Plus, at its next event, Crazy Raccoon Revive. The outlet points to posts of the club's own account about the event for both names. So a brand can still be present at a Crazy Raccoon show; what the club no longer has is a sponsor of the organization itself.

The end of the deal came with few details. Sheep Esports reports no reason for the split from either side, and no figure for what the deal was worth.

Takano's reaction is the only explanation on the record. Having zero sponsors was his aim, he wrote, and Sheep Esports reads his post as treating the end of the deal as a win, on a path it calls clearly planned.

The club behind the decision

Crazy Raccoon was formed in April 2018, according to its own site, which carries the copyright of SAMURAI KOBO and names Takano as its representative director.

It has never been only a competitive team. Sheep Esports counts 45 members, mixing professional players, streamers and VTubers, the streamers who appear on screen as an animated character rather than on camera. The club claims more than 20 million followers on Twitter and YouTube across those members. Its trademark line, as the outlet reports it, is to make gamers cool, rather than to chase sporting results alone.

The results are there all the same. Sheep Esports lists a Major title in Overwatch in 2024, a place on the podium of the Overwatch World Championship in 2024 and again in 2025, and the Brawl Stars World Championship title in 2025. The club also plays PUBG, Street Fighter, Fortnite and Apex Legends, the last through a partnership with 100 Thieves, the American organization.

In PUBG, its team was one of the two invitees from Korea's PUBG Weekly Series to the first half of the PUBG Global Series in 2026, the international circuit of the game, alongside T1, when PUBG Esports named the invited teams on February 13.

The club's own site also carries its tournament brand, CR CUP, which runs qualifier-based events with large prize money, events that mix streamers and competitive players, and regular events across many game titles, and an app, the CR APP, that fans use to log their visits to the club's gaming space and to follow news of their favorite members and goods. Each is another point where the club meets its audience without a partner in between.

Where the money comes from instead

The club's income now rests on lines it controls itself. None of them comes with a published figure: Crazy Raccoon has not released revenue numbers, and the Sheep Esports report gives none.

The Shibuya store was the first merchandise store of a Japanese esports team in Shibuya, according to Sheep Esports. The space next to it holds more than 60 PCs, free to use once a visitor registers.

Xross Stars is the newest line. The card game launched in 2025, features the club's players and streamers as well as talent from other agencies such as VSPO!, and reached its fifth expansion within a year, the outlet reports. Each expansion is a new set of cards, so the game has given the club five releases to sell in its first year.

The online store and the fan club

The latest change to these lines came the day after the GALLERIA announcement. On September 1, Crazy Raccoon announced the relaunch of its online store.

The club's own post says the design is largely unchanged and that the work went into how the store functions, above all the log-in. Fans now sign in with a CRID, the club's own account, and that account becomes their member profile on the new store. Member information from the old store is not carried over.

Two things move into the new store. Fans can apply there for a fan club membership card and for the premium renewal benefits, and all future goods will be sold through the new store only. The old store is to close, on a date the club has not yet announced.

The same CRID account now links the store and the fan club. The post gives no prices, no member numbers and no sales figures.

Events at the center of the model

The most visible line is the club's events. Sheep Esports traces a steep climb in three years.

Between the two, the 2024 edition filled Saitama Super Arena on two days, both sold out, the outlet reports. The Tokyo Dome show of August 2025 then reached about 50,000 people, against a record capacity of 55,000, and Sheep Esports calls Crazy Raccoon the first esports team to take over the venue.

T1 has put a figure on what this kind of event brings in. In January, Sheep Esports reported that T1, the South Korean League of Legends club, would hold two Home Ground events in 2026, at Inspire Arena in Incheon from April 24 to 26 and at the KSPO Dome in Seoul from August 14 to 16. Its chief operating officer, Josh Woongki Ahn, told the Korean outlet Chosun Money that earlier editions had brought in between US$1.4 million and US$2 million in ticketing revenue.

T1's large events grew out of league matches moved on the road. Under the LCK Road Show, the league's decentralized format that takes T1's matches away from LoL Park, its traditional venue, T1 played at Goyang Sono Arena in 2024, at the Suwon Convention Center in a 2025 pilot, and at Inspire Arena in Incheon in July 2025 before more than 30,000 fans, according to the same report. Ahn also told Chosun Money that the club was interested in a Home Ground event at the Sphere in Las Vegas and, one day, in building its own stadium.

T1 does this with sponsors at its side. Its 2025 accounts, as Sheep Esports reported them in April, showed revenue of ₩88.6 billion, about US$65 million, up more than 80 percent on 2024, and the club's first operating profit, ₩2.5 billion, with merchandise and sponsorships making up a large share of that growth. Revenue in Korea nearly doubled to ₩51.8 billion and revenue from the Americas almost doubled, while the cost of goods sold also nearly doubled, which the outlet tied to higher sales of products. Crazy Raccoon is now trying the same kind of fan business without the second of those two lines.

What comes next

The first test of the model without a club sponsor is days away. Crazy Raccoon Revive is scheduled for September 5 and 6 at Yokohama BUNTAI, with Valorant, Overwatch and Street Fighter 6 on the program, Sheep Esports reports. It is the event at which nosh and Scalp D Next Plus will still be displayed.

The online store is in its first week. The old one remains open until a closing date the club has said it will set later, and every new product from now on goes through the relaunched site.

The figures that would show how the model performs are not public. Crazy Raccoon has published no revenue, no attendance target for Yokohama and no sales for its cards or its stores. What the club has said, through its owner, is that it chose this path and intends to stay on it.

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