Faker turned down $20m per year LPL contract to stay with T1
Riot GamesAccording to T1 CEO Joe Marsh, League of Legends superstar Lee ‘Faker’ Sang-hyeok supposedly turned down a $20M per year contract with an LPL team to stay with the organization.
Faker is arguably the greatest League of Legends player of all time, with virtually no other players coming close to his achievements. Most notably, throughout his career, the 25-year-old has won the prestigious World Championship three times.
Additionally, following an impressive record-breaking 20-0 2022 Spring Split, ‘The Unkillable Demon King’ now has 10 LCK titles under his belt with T1.
However, it could’ve panned out differently for Faker, Joe Marsh revealed in a recent podcast that the League of Legends star was offered a $20M contract to join a team in the rival LPL league, but he turned it down.
Riot Games KoreaDuring Doublelift’s Trash Talk podcast on April 6, the T1 CEO discussed how important it was to establish a relationship with Faker and his family. Eventually, the conversation shifted to the 2021 off-season, where Faker became a free agent before re-signing with T1.
According to Joe, the League star turned down an outlandish $20M a year offer from Chinese organizations. “He doesn’t need money. He has money, he’s super successful, and he’s made really strong investments in Korea,” Marsh explained. “There’s literally a building he owns called Faker Tower, and it’s worth a lot of money.
“He’s done really well financially. It’s about where he thinks he can compete the most and win.” Joe added that even this past off-season he got outlandish offers from other organizations: “He always gets offers, even this off-season I had to fly to Korea after free agency started because he was a free agent and every time he’s a free agent the offer from China comes in. It’s you know, $20 million a year.”
After such a dominant LCK Spring Split, Faker’s decision to stick with T1 was clearly the right one. Now the 25-year-old will be heading to the Mid-Season Invitational in Busan, Korea to attempt to bring home his third MSI title.
2023 will mark Faker’s 10th year under the T1 banner, and it’s anyone’s guess how many more years we’ll see from him.