A look at Tencent's TJ Sports, which surpassed $152M in total revenue since 2019 and runs the League of Legends Pro League, the largest esports league by size
Zheping Huang / Bloomberg : Tweets: @quicktake Tweets: Bloomberg Quicktake / @quicktake : “The goal is to make esports just as popular as the NBA or the NFL.” Tencent has placed pro gaming at the heart of its ambition to dominate online entertainment. @pingroma spoke with TJ Sports co-CEO Leo Lin about #LeagueOfLegends and more @TencentGames https://www.bloomberg.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
TJ Sports is the payoff of a bet Tencent placed years ago: since committing $150M a year to esports in 2018, it has built the League of Legends Pro League into the largest esports league by size and crossed $152M in total revenue since 2019, with co-CEO Leo Lin framing the goal as making esports as popular as the NBA or NFL.
The milestone lands mid-arc for Tencent's esports strategy: pro gaming was later elevated to medal-eligible status at the Hangzhou Asian Games, even as Beijing's crackdown on the domestic gaming industry raised the regulatory stakes — and by 2025, domestic gaming was still growing 17% YoY in Tencent's Q2 results, suggesting the franchise-league model survived the turbulence.
First-order effects
- The $152M revenue figure validates Tencent's annual $150M esports investment as a self-sustaining business line rather than marketing spend, giving TJ Sports a commercial footing to run the LPL independently.
- Leo Lin's NBA/NFL framing positions the LPL to court the same sponsorship and broadcast economics as traditional leagues — a path Tencent already tested through its 2018 revenue deals with the NBA and Under Armour.
Second-order effects
- Traditional sports partners like the NBA and Under Armour now face an esports property with proven league-scale revenue, strengthening the case for deeper cross-sport commercial bundles with Tencent.
- Medal eligibility at the Hangzhou Asian Games gives the LPL a national-team pipeline and state-level legitimacy, raising the bar for rival leagues and publishers trying to build comparable franchise ecosystems.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, esports consolidates around publisher-owned league operators — Tencent's model of controlling both the game and the league — while regulators treat pro gaming as a mainstream sport to be governed, not a gaming fad to be curbed.
- The durability of TJ Sports' revenue through China's gaming crackdown suggests league-franchise esports is becoming a structural pillar of online entertainment, with the LPL as the template other publishers and markets copy.
The trend: Esports is maturing from publisher marketing into franchised, medal-eligible mainstream sport — with Tencent's TJ Sports and the LPL setting the operating model.