Listed esports companies: where NIP, OverActive and GameSquare earn

Most esports teams are private, and their accounts stay private with them. A few belong to companies whose shares trade on a stock exchange, and those companies have to publish what they earn, what they spend and what they lose, quarter after quarter. For anyone who wants to know how a team that wins trophies turns into a business, these filings are the closest thing to an open book the scene has.

Three of those companies own names that fans follow every week. NIP Group, listed on Nasdaq in New York, owns Ninjas in Pyjamas. OverActive Media, listed in Toronto, owns Movistar KOI in League of Legends and Toronto KOI in Call of Duty. GameSquare Holdings, also on Nasdaq, owns FaZe Clan and runs its rosters as FaZe Esports.

This guide reads their latest published figures, as of early June 2026: the 2025 annual accounts of all three, and the first quarter of 2026 for OverActive Media and GameSquare. It explains each revenue line in the words the companies use, shows how much of each business is esports in the narrow sense, and why the last line of the accounts can look so different from the first.

NIP Group 2025 accounts as reported by Sheep Esports on May 22, 2026; OverActive Media release of April 28, 2026; GameSquare annual report on Form 10-K for 2025. Shares computed from the published amounts.

Why the filings matter

GameSquare files its annual report on Form 10-K and its quarterly results releases with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the agency that oversees American markets. NIP Group, a foreign company listed in the United States, files an annual report on Form 20-F. OverActive Media publishes its results through press releases.

What these documents give is uneven. None of the three prints a single line called "esports revenue" that a reader can compare across companies. Each groups its income in its own way: by type of activity at GameSquare, by side of the business at OverActive Media, by business line at NIP Group.

Where a figure is published, the money tied to the teams is the smaller part: NIP Group's esports line was under a tenth of its 2025 revenue, and OverActive Media's Business Operations made up about 77% of its total. The larger part comes from the work built around the teams: marketing for brands, managing creators, producing events. GameSquare does not split its teams out.

Four terms that come up in every report

Before the figures, a few words of accounting, because all three companies use them.

Revenue is what the company billed for the period, before any cost. Gross profit is revenue minus the direct cost of earning it, and the gross margin is that profit as a share of revenue.

Adjusted EBITDA is earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, with further items removed by the company's own definition. OverActive Media and GameSquare both put it forward. It is not defined by accounting standards, so one company's figure cannot be laid next to another's as if they measured the same thing.

An impairment is a write-down: the company reduces the value at which it carries an asset, such as a brand, a league place or the premium it paid for an acquisition, because that value is no longer supported. It is a charge in the income statement, but no cash leaves the company when it is booked.

OverActive Media: a team owner with two sides

OverActive Media Corp., headquartered in Toronto, describes itself in its releases as a global esports and entertainment company that operates competitive teams alongside business units across media, content and live events. Its teams are Movistar KOI, which plays in the League of Legends EMEA Championship (LEC), Riot Games' league for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Toronto KOI, the Call of Duty League team that played as Toronto Ultra until a rebrand completed in 2025.

The company reported revenue of C$28.5 million for 2025, up 5% from C$27.0 million, in a release dated April 28, 2026. It splits its activity into two sides, Team Operations and Business Operations, without defining either in the release. It gives a figure for only one of them.

Business Operations revenue rose 34% to C$22.0 million, about 77% of the year's total. By subtraction, about C$6.5 million came from everything else; the release does not print that figure. The company names three drivers for the Business Operations line: three major live events, the launch of Fenix Club and growth in its Agencies business with Pepsi and Stonefire.

Each of these is a different kind of income:

• Live events. In 2025 the company hosted LEC on the Road at Madrid Arena, with more than 18,000 fans and a peak of 348,000 viewers online, a Call of Duty League Major in Madrid and the Call of Duty League Championship Weekend in Kitchener, Ontario.
• Fenix Club. A paid membership, the company's first product sold directly to fans, offering merchandise discounts, early access to event tickets, giveaways and community channels, according to the release.
• Agencies. Work done for brands, with Pepsi and Stonefire named. The release says the company grew it into a meaningful commercial line.
• Sponsorship. Toronto KOI renewed Bell Canada as its exclusive telecommunications partner through 2027, alongside renewals with Monster Energy, AMD, Blacklyte, Red Bull and SCUF Gaming, and a new deal with Little Caesars.

OverActive Media: league money, skins and timing

The revenue that comes from the leagues themselves is harder to see, but the releases point to it twice. The fourth quarter of 2025 brought C$7.3 million of revenue against C$9.9 million a year earlier, a fall of 26%. The company explains it by one line: the last quarter of 2024 included unusually high sales of Call of Duty League skins, cosmetic items sold inside the game, and those sales did not recur.

The same quarter showed a gross margin of 61%, against 54% a year earlier, which the company attributes to a higher share of league-related revenue recognized in the quarter. In its first-quarter release of May 28, 2026, chief executive Adam Adamou said the company expected its highest-margin league and digital revenue to build through the year, as it does each year.

In that first quarter, revenue grew 7% to C$5.4 million, from C$5.0 million, led by Business Operations: sponsorships, partnerships, agency services, content production and live events. It more than offset lower team operations revenue, which the company attributes to the timing of revenue recognition and to its exit from the Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) league, Riot Games' top level of competition in Valorant. Gross margin rose to 59% from 52%, which the company credits to a stronger contribution from Business Operations and better performance in agency and live events.

The full year 2025 went the other way on margin: 53% against 62% in 2024, with no reason given in the release. The table below sets out the two periods the company has published in 2026.

The loss for 2025, C$11.4 million against C$0.6 million in 2024, owes much to a one-time effect of the league model. The 2024 accounts included a non-cash gain of C$11.5 million on the decrease in the value of the company's franchise obligations, after the termination of its Call of Duty League participation agreement and the forgiveness of its LEC franchise fee. A franchise fee is what a team committed to pay for a permanent place in a league. Riot Games described the old arrangement of its leagues in a text of March 14, 2024: teams committed to pay about US$10 million to take part and received 50% of certain league revenues. Under the model Riot set out that day, teams keep their places, receive a fixed stipend and share in revenue from sales of League of Legends esports digital content.

Adamou framed the priority for the year in the April release. "2026 is about margin and cash," he said. On April 30, 2026, the company closed a secured debt financing of about C$1.95 million, made of four secured promissory notes and 9,797,000 share purchase warrants.

GameSquare: an agency group that owns FaZe

GameSquare Holdings, based in Frisco, Texas, presents itself in its May 14, 2026 release as a media, entertainment and technology company that connects brands and publishers with Gen Z, Gen Alpha and Millennial audiences, through creative services, analytics and FaZe Esports. The esports organization is one business among many: its annual report for 2025 also lists Zoned, a gaming and lifestyle marketing agency; Code Red Esports and Click, talent agencies in the United Kingdom and Australia; Fourth Frame Studios, a production studio; Mission Supply, a merchandise business; Stream Hatchet, which measures live streaming audiences; Sideqik, an influencer marketing platform; and Gaming Community Network, a digital media company.

The annual report breaks revenue from continuing operations down by type of activity, not by brand. Three lines describe the operating business; a fourth, smaller line called yield brought US$1.1 million in 2025 and nothing in 2024.

Agency revenue is the largest line and the one that grew most. The report describes it as coming from representing players, influencers and on-screen talent, and from consulting on and brokering brand activations. On the three lines together, it made up about 60.4% of the business in 2025. The report names large customers such as Jack in the Box, Red Bull and Kraft, without giving their share of revenue.

Owned and operated IP covers the properties the company holds itself, FaZe among them. The report does not say how much of the line FaZe represents. It does say what FaZe Esports earns from: several revenue streams including brand sponsorships, consumer products and esports. It adds that FaZe produces merchandise and creates advertising and sponsorship programs for brands. The competitive side, in other words, sits inside a line that also holds merchandise and sponsorship, and its own weight is not published.

GameSquare in 2026: the quarter and the targets

The first quarter of 2026 brought revenue of US$14.5 million, against US$7.4 million a year earlier, a rise of 95.0%, in unaudited figures. The release gives no split by line and no figure for FaZe Esports. Justin Kenna, the chief executive, said the results were in line with the company's expectations for a seasonally slow period.

The cost of earning that revenue grew faster. Gross margin was 38.4%, against 42.5% a year earlier. Adjusted EBITDA was a loss of US$1.1 million, against US$2.6 million.

The company works with a second set of figures. Pro forma results count TubeBuddy, a software service for people who publish videos on YouTube that GameSquare agreed to buy on February 20, 2026, as if it had been owned for the whole period. On that basis, first-quarter revenue was US$15.8 million and gross margin 43.1%. The full-year guidance is pro forma too: revenue of US$85 million to US$90 million, a gross margin of 35% to 40% and adjusted EBITDA of more than US$5 million.

In the release, Kenna described the company's aim as identifying, recruiting, monetizing and deploying influential creator talent, and said it expected to add more commercially relevant creators to its platform in the second quarter.

The net loss from continuing operations was US$17.6 million, against US$3.8 million. Of that amount, US$14.6 million was a fair-value change on assets the company holds on its balance sheet, the release says, and US$1.1 million one-time costs linked to the TubeBuddy acquisition. The company removes both from its adjusted EBITDA.

NIP Group: talent management comes first

NIP Group Inc. is a holding company incorporated in the Cayman Islands, with subsidiaries in China, according to its annual report on Form 20-F for 2025. Its teams compete under the Ninjas in Pyjamas name across 11 titles, with offices in Abu Dhabi, China and Brazil, Sheep Esports reported on May 22, 2026, in its reading of the accounts. Hicham Chahine and Mario Ho are its co-chief executives.

The annual report gives consolidated net revenue of US$126.5 million for 2025, against US$85.3 million for 2024, a rise of 48.4%. The detail by business line comes from the same accounts as reported by Sheep Esports.

Talent management, at US$62.8 million, is close to half of group revenue, against US$47.3 million in 2024. The 20-F says the company incubates talent to become online entertainers, and that the activity earns advertising fees, sponsorship fees and live streaming service fees. Event production, US$31.9 million, covers the organization of esports tournaments and events. The fourth activity is bitcoin mining, which Sheep Esports puts at nearly 16% of group revenue; the three named lines leave about US$20.0 million for it.

The lines do not all make money. Sheep Esports reported that talent management and the fourth line both cost more to deliver than they brought in, and that the group's gross profit for the year was a loss of US$1.5 million.

NIP Group's esports line, piece by piece

Esports revenue was US$11.8 million in 2025, down from US$14.7 million, a fall of 19.7%. Sheep Esports attributes the fall to lower sponsorship income and a reduced league revenue share. It is the one line where the Ninjas in Pyjamas name appears on its own, and the accounts split it between the group's Chinese and other subsidiaries and Ninjas in Pyjamas.

Each line is a distinct way a team earns:

• Tournament participation is the money a team earns from the competitions it plays in; the accounts as reported do not split it further. It is the largest esports line on both sides of the group.
• Player transfer and rental fees are what other teams pay to sign a player under contract (a buyout) or to borrow one for a period (a loan, called a rental). The Chinese side earned US$2.0 million this way, Ninjas in Pyjamas US$0.1 million.
• Sponsorship and advertising is what brands pay to appear on jerseys, streams and social channels. On this line Ninjas in Pyjamas, at US$0.7 million, earned more than the rest of the group.
• Merchandise covers jerseys and other products sold to fans.

The league revenue share Sheep Esports names as a cause of the decline is the part of a league's income that the league passes on to its teams. Sheep Esports describes the reduced league revenue share as a common trend seen in other esports leagues.

Why the last line looks so different

All three companies reported a loss in their latest published periods. At NIP Group for 2025 and at GameSquare for the first quarter of 2026, most of it came from the same family of non-cash charges.

NIP Group's net loss for 2025 was US$238.1 million, against US$12.7 million in 2024, according to the 20-F. Sheep Esports reported that it included a goodwill impairment of US$122.5 million and an impairment of intangible assets of US$64.4 million, tied to the reduced carrying value of the NIP brand name and league-related rights, plus US$36.7 million of share-based compensation, the cost of paying staff in shares. Goodwill is the part of an acquisition price above the value of the assets bought. League-related rights are the places in leagues that a team holds. NIP Group ended the year with US$7.1 million of cash, and its short-term borrowings rose from US$10.6 million to US$38.8 million.

At OverActive Media, amortization and impairment came to C$2.4 million in 2025, against C$1.1 million, and the year compared with one that carried the C$11.5 million franchise gain. At GameSquare, US$14.6 million of the first-quarter loss of US$17.6 million was the fair-value change.

The stock market has its own test. On March 24, 2026, Nasdaq notified NIP Group that its American depositary shares had closed under the exchange's US$1.00 minimum bid for 32 consecutive business days, the company said in a release of March 27. It has until September 21, 2026 to bring the closing bid back to at least US$1.00 for 10 consecutive business days. The release says the notice has no current effect on the listing or the trading of the shares.

The three companies side by side

Set next to each other, the three group their revenue in different ways.

NIP Group has the largest revenue of the three, with esports under a tenth of it; its growth in 2025 came from talent management and event production. At OverActive Media, the events it hosted in 2025 were league events in Madrid and Kitchener, the sponsorship renewals it lists are Toronto KOI's, and its Agencies business is the line it says it grew into a meaningful commercial one in 2025. GameSquare is an agency and media group that owns FaZe, and its largest growth in 2025 was in the Agency line: representing talent and brokering brand activations.

In none of the three does a filing put a figure on what the teams alone earn from competing. Where a figure exists, at NIP Group, the esports line is 9.3% of revenue.

The dates in the filings

The next reports and deadlines are set by the companies' own documents and by the exchanges' rules.

OverActive Media and GameSquare publish quarterly results, and the second quarter of 2026 closes on June 30. GameSquare reaffirmed its pro forma guidance for the year in its first-quarter release. OverActive Media has been named Official National Team Partner for Canada, alongside Esport Canada, for the Esports Nations Cup in Riyadh, with Movistar KOI as co-team partner for Spain.

NIP Group's Nasdaq deadline of September 21, 2026 is the date set by the exchange's notice. The release of March 27 adds that the company may be eligible for more time if it does not regain compliance by then, at the discretion of Nasdaq's staff.

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