Karmine Corp say the yearly cost of their LEC slot is behind them

For the past few years, the end of the calendar year has carried the same deadline for Karmine Corp. The French club had to find €5 million by the end of each year to pay for its place in the LEC, the top League of Legends league in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. On Monday, October 5, co-founder Kamel "Kameto" Kebir told viewers of his livestream that this yearly burden is no longer there and that the club can now reinvest, Sheep Esports reported on October 7.

He did not say how. Kameto and Arthur Perticoz, the club's former chief executive, spoke on the stream of a decisive move, without giving its terms. What is on the record is the deal that created the obligation in the first place: the purchase, in October 2023, of a majority stake in the company holding Astralis' LEC slot.

Kameto's yearly figure as reported by Sheep Esports on October 7, 2026; deal terms from Astralis A/S company announcement No. 19 of October 18, 2023.

What Kameto said on stream

The stream took place during the Rocket League offseason. According to Sheep Esports, Kameto described the past few years as a period in which the club was only just keeping itself alive, and tied that strain to the €5 million it had to raise before every year end for its LEC place. The outlet adds a second cause in its own reading: the cost of fielding competitive rosters in several games at once.

The message of the stream was that this pressure has lifted. Kameto said the club no longer faces the same annual financial burden. He also said that the money worries had taken away some of his enjoyment of competition, and that he expected to have fun again.

On the cause, he gave nothing away. He and Arthur Perticoz described what they called a master move, and Kameto kept its details for a later broadcast. No figure for the club's budget, its revenue or its debt was given on the stream.

The news is therefore narrower than it may sound. Karmine Corp did not publish accounts or a statement. One of its founders said, in his own words and on his own channel, that a yearly payment tied to the LEC slot no longer weighs on the club. That is the fact; the mechanism behind it is still to be explained by the club itself.

How Karmine Corp bought its LEC place

The obligation goes back to October 18, 2023. That Wednesday, Karmine Corp announced on social media that it would join the LEC, and Astralis A/S, the Danish company that then owned the slot, published the terms in a company announcement marked as containing inside information.

The structure was not a simple sale. Astralis first moved its LEC franchise slot, its place in the league, into a newly formed subsidiary it owned outright, AK-Game SAS. Karmine Corp SAS then agreed to buy two thirds of that company. The table sets out the terms the Danish company gave.

At the exchange rates of the day, Sheep Esports put the DKK 194 million value at about €26 million, the same figure it repeats in its report of October 7, 2026. The 2023 announcement gave no amount for each tranche, only the combined cash effect.

For Astralis, the sale changed its year. The company estimated a net gain before tax of DKK 153 million on the deal for 2023 and raised its EBITDA guidance, gain included, to DKK 150 to 155 million, from a range of minus DKK 1 million to plus DKK 4 million. EBITDA is earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. In the same announcement, Astralis said it would leave Nasdaq First North Growth Market Denmark, the Copenhagen growth market where its shares traded, with October 25, 2023 as the last trading day.

What protected the seller

Sheep Esports' report of October 18, 2023 added a term that shows why the payments mattered to the French side. The agreement protected the seller: in the event of a payment default, Astralis would have the right to secure itself with a stake in the ownership.

The same report said that talks between the two organizations had started the year before, and that playing in the LEC had long been Kameto's ambition.

Set side by side, the two reports describe one commitment from two angles. Astralis wrote of a sale completed in tranches from 2023 to 2025 and of options that could run to 2031. Kameto speaks of €5 million to raise by every year end. Neither text breaks the yearly sum down, and the club has not said whether the end of the burden comes from the last tranche being paid, from a change to the agreement or from something else.

Why a league place carried a price

A slot in a franchised league is a place a team holds from one season to the next. Riot Games built its main League of Legends leagues on that model. In a text published on March 14, 2024, John Needham, Riot's president of publishing and esports, described the original arrangement: teams committed to pay about US$10 million to take part in a league, and in return received half of certain league revenues, not profits. Most of that revenue came from sponsorship, he wrote, with a much smaller share from media rights.

The same text says the model did not hold. Riot had already deferred and spread out the participation fees, applied minimum guarantees above what teams were owed and paid revenue shares early, and still the teams' cash reserves ran dry as costs outgrew revenue.

The Karmine Corp purchase sits apart from that fee. It was a private sale between two organizations: Karmine Corp paid Astralis, not Riot, for a majority of the company that held the place.

What the league pays teams today

Riot's 2024 text also set out the model now used in the LCK, the LCS and the LEC. Teams keep their slots, receive a fixed stipend whose amount Riot did not publish, and share in the revenue from what Riot calls League of Legends esports digital content sales. That revenue goes into a Global Revenue Pool, split three ways.

General Shares go to the teams of the top leagues. Competitive Shares are paid in two parts, one on regional league standings and one on placements at international events. Fandom Shares reward teams for the fan engagement they build around their players and brands. Riot also said it would share half of its other direct revenue, such as sponsorship and media, once it had recovered its annual investment in League of Legends esports.

None of these payments concerns the price one organization owes another for the purchase of a place.

Where the club says the money will go

Kameto listed the areas he wants to fund, as Sheep Esports reports them. The first is the club's facilities, including its bootcamp arrangements, the training stays teams take before major events. The second is staff: more people for content creation, for merchandise and for the competitive teams.

He also spoke of investing more in the projects the club already runs, and of possibly looking at other games, without announcing any new team or title. The emphasis, in the outlet's account, was on stable working conditions and infrastructure rather than on spending more for its own sake. Another livestream is expected to give more detail, possibly with a tour of the club's facilities.

The projects already running are many. In League of Legends, Karmine Corp hosted two of the LEC's 2026 Roadtrips, home weekends away from the league's studio: at Les Arènes in Évry-Courcouronnes from April 24 to 26, and at the adidas Arena in Paris from July 24 to 26, according to Riot's program. The team was one of the LEC's two representatives at the Mid-Season Invitational in Daejeon, South Korea, alongside G2 Esports, Riot's MSI primer of June 15 shows. Its second roster, Karmine Corp Blue, was invited to LEC Versus, the league's opening tournament of 2026, as champion of EMEA Masters Summer 2025.

Outside League of Legends, the Rocket League team won the Paris Major on Sunday, May 24, before a home crowd, Psyonix reported. The Valorant team was among the last four of the VCT EMEA season before the Barcelona Finals at the end of August, and qualified for Valorant Champions in Shanghai, where it was drawn in Group D with NRG, Nongshim RedForce and XLG Esports.

What comes next

The next step belongs to the club. Kameto has promised to explain the move on a later broadcast, and until then the terms remain private. The 2023 announcement gives the frame any change would sit in: a stake of 33.33% kept by Astralis in AK-Game SAS, and options that could hand Karmine Corp the whole company by 2031.

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