G2 Esports new League of Legends team with founder Carlos Rodriguez.

Carlos Rodriguez: Why G2 Esports keeps the faith in a tough industry

The esports industry has a lot of promise, but it has been whipsawed over the years. Physical events were growing fast and the audience became bigger than that for traditional sports. But esports fans didn’t spend as much money, and so it was hard for any companies in the space to make a profit.

G2 Esports has been one of the rare exceptions, as it has been profitable or near breakeven thanks to a combination of supporting winning teams and generating various kinds of sponsorship, merch and other revenue. But the pandemic came along and wiped out physical events for a while. And while digital audiences grew, it remained hard to make money.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.