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For three seasons, the teams of the LEC have built their rosters against the same line: 2 million euros for the five best-paid players. For 2027 the line drops to €1.65 million, Sheep Esports, the esports news outlet, reported on Friday, September 25. The outlet cites version 1.3 of the league's Sporting Financial Regulations, a rulebook dated September 24, 2026 that Riot Games lists on its EMEA Competitive Operations page.
The LEC is the top League of Legends league of Europe, the Middle East and Africa, run by Riot Games, the game's publisher. Its Sporting Financial Regulations, SFR for short, do not forbid a team from paying more. They set a threshold, charge a fee on what is spent above it, and set a floor at half of it. With the threshold going from €2 million to €1.65 million, the floor follows, from €1 million to €825,000, in the figures Sheep Esports gives. According to the outlet, the new text also changes what is counted as pay, and how teams must report it.
What version 1.3 changes
The headline figure in Sheep Esports' report is a cut of €350,000, or 17.5% of the former threshold. The outlet notes that the SFR was unveiled in September 2023, has applied since the 2024 season, and stayed at €2 million in 2024, 2025 and 2026. The outlet calls this the first major change to the system.
The floor is not set separately. Riot Games defined it in 2023 as 50% of the threshold, so it falls by the same 17.5%, a reduction of €175,000.
Related readUK minimum wage and worker status: what it means for esports playersBehind both numbers stands a third, the baseline. Sheep Esports describes it as the lowest level the threshold may reach in a given season, while the threshold itself is recalculated every year. An update published by Riot Games on September 30, 2025 set that baseline at €1.2 million for the 2027 and 2028 seasons, the outlet reports. The 2027 threshold therefore sits €450,000 above the lowest level the league had allowed itself.
LEC Sporting Financial Regulations, version 1.3 of September 24, 2026, and Riot Games' update of September 30, 2025, as reported by Sheep Esports on September 25, 2026.
How the SFR works
Riot Games announced the system on September 28, 2023, on the LoL Esports site, for the 2024 season. It gave three definitions that still frame everything else.
The first is the SFR Spend: the total paid to the five highest-paid players of a team. The pay of the other players on the roster is not part of that sum. The second is the SFR Threshold, the upper line. A team whose spend passes it owes the league a fee. The third is the SFR Floor, the lower line, at half the threshold. The league presented the space between floor and threshold as a target range in which teams are encouraged to stay.
The 2023 announcement gave no amount in euros. It said how the threshold is worked out: from the salaries of LEC players, from the League Revenue Pool of the current year and its forecast for the years ahead, from the financial data of the teams, revenue and expenses included, and from other market indicators.
The stated aim was financial stability and competitive balance. In its announcement the league wrote that the rules were meant to discourage teams from overspending on player salaries, and to let players, teams and the league grow at a pace that can last.
Related readEmployee or contractor? How US tax rules classify esports playersThe first cycle ran from Tuesday, November 21, 2023, the date on which contracts for the 2024 season could start, to Monday, November 18, 2024, the date on which they ended. The LEC measures spending over that contract year, not over the calendar year.
The fee above the line, and where it goes
The fee is what gives the threshold its weight. Under the terms Riot Games published in 2023, a team whose spend is above the threshold pays the league 50% of the excess. A second rate was announced at the same time: 100% once the spend passes 150% of the threshold.
A worked example, with illustrative figures, shows the effect of the cut. A team that spent exactly €2 million on its five best-paid players owed nothing in 2026. With the same spend in 2027 it would be €350,000 over the threshold, and at the 50% rate the fee would be €175,000.
There is a margin. Sheep Esports reports that a team over the threshold by 5% or less across the year is not charged, but has to be back in line the following season or face penalties. On a threshold of €1.65 million, 5% is €82,500, which places the edge of that margin at €1,732,500.
The money collected does not stay with the league. According to the 2023 announcement, half goes to the LEC teams that respect both the floor and the threshold, and half supports the second tier of League of Legends in the region, the national and regional leagues below the LEC.
The floor works through that same redistribution. A team that spends less than the floor is not fined, Sheep Esports reports, but it is left out of the teams entitled to a share of the fees.
Related readUS minimum wage for esports players: federal floor and 2026 state ratesThe threshold is a line with a price, not a ban
No LEC rule stops a team from spending more than €1.65 million on its five best-paid players in 2027. Above the line it owes a fee on the excess, and the fee is shared with teams that stayed inside the range and with the tier below.
What counts as pay under the new text
The original definition spoke of salaries. As Sheep Esports describes the rules today, the spend covers salaries, bonuses and additional compensation such as image rights. Three things stay outside it: the revenue a player earns from personal sponsors, prize money, and housing assistance.
Version 1.3 tightens the edges of that definition in three ways, according to the outlet's reading of the rulebook.
| Subject | What the new text says |
|---|---|
| Exit payments | A termination payment, a financial settlement or an early-release payment counts in full in the season in which it is made. |
| Nature of a payment | The league may reclassify any payment according to its economic substance. Leadership and conduct bonuses are named. |
| Reporting | Each organization hands in a detailed statement, line by line. Failing to comply exposes it to disciplinary sanctions. |
LEC Sporting Financial Regulations, version 1.3, as reported by Sheep Esports on September 25, 2026.
The first change concerns the cost of parting with a player. When a team ends a contract early and pays the player to leave, that sum now weighs on the season's spend in full.
The second is aimed at labels. A payment called a leadership bonus or a conduct bonus is still pay if that is its economic substance, and the league gives itself the power to count it as such.
The third concerns the document each team hands in. The statement now has to list every payment on its own line, and a team that does not comply faces disciplinary sanctions.
Contracts signed before the change
A lower threshold arrives in the middle of contracts written under the higher one. The SFR has carried an answer to that problem since its first version. In 2023, Riot Games wrote an exception for players signed during or before the end of that year's LEC Season Finals: the team's spend was reduced by one fifth of the threshold or by the player's actual salary, whichever was lower.
A rule of the same family applies now. Sheep Esports reports that a player already under contract, whom the outlet calls a legacy player, counts in his team's spend for one fifth of the threshold, or for his actual salary if it is lower. The outlet writes that the new threshold took effect on September 16. One fifth of €1.65 million is €330,000. Five players under such contracts would therefore count for €1.65 million at most, which is the threshold itself.
Related readWhen a team stops paying its players: what a league can doA player who signs a new contract does not carry that status, in the outlet's account: he is counted under the new threshold.
A second league moves the same month
The LEC is not the only Riot Games league to rework its spending rules ahead of this offseason. On September 8 the LCK, South Korea's league, published a rulebook update on the LoL Esports site. Its own system, the Balanced Spending System, also measures the pay of a team's five highest earners against an upper limit and charges a luxury tax above it.
The two leagues changed different parts of the same kind of machine. The LEC moved the line itself. The LCK, in the terms reported by Sheep Esports on September 10, changed who may be counted below real pay: a player now needs six points from titles won over three years to count at 50% of his salary, and a team may name two such players at most. The LCK also went from two tax brackets to four, with a top rate of 60% on spending above 250% of its limit, the outlet reported.
Both leagues wrote transition terms for players already under contract. The cover of the LCK's revised rulebook gives September 18 as its effective date.
What comes next
The 2027 threshold governs the contract year that follows this season. Riot Games' 2023 announcement tied the first cycle to the LEC's global contract start and end dates, both in the second half of November.
Two further steps are already written down. In Sheep Esports' account, the baseline of €1.2 million holds for 2028 as well as 2027, which means the threshold for 2028, when the league recalculates it, cannot go under that amount. For 2029, the baseline is expected to be lowered to 1 million, in the outlet's words.
Version 1.3 also shortens the warning teams receive. The notice the league must give before changing the baseline goes from three seasons to two, according to the same report.
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