OverDrive Comments on the Issue of Team Earnings at the IEM Cologne Major

Alexey “OverDrive” Biryukov offers a mixed assessment of the situation regarding the drop in team revenue from IEM Cologne Major sticker sales.

The analyst shared his opinion on Telegram.

“Revenue from stickers under the new system has dropped by 2.5 to 3 times. On the one hand, this is, of course, bad. The entire ecosystem could be severely disrupted because, for many organizations, majors were the only way to make money, and now maintaining clubs has become economically unviable for them. On the other hand, the underperforming teams that exploited weaker regions will disappear. It’s good, for example, that the Gladiators will earn from stickers under the new system.”

Acording to a statement by Alexey “OverDrive” Biryukov, the sharp drop in revenue from sticker sales could severely impact the income of esports organizations. Nevertheless, this situation will have a positive impact on the CS2 pro scene as a whole, since it will no longer be economically viable for weaker clubs to maintain rosters solely to earn revenue from sticker sales by securing slots at Majors through participation in qualifiers in regions that are known to be weak.

As a reminder, Valery “L3rich” Kharitonov, head of the esports organization Aurora, previously called the IEM Cologne Major the worst Major in CS2 history in terms of participant sticker sales.