Industry analysts have described Arcane as a commercial failure for the company. The studio’s co-founder Marc Merrill responded to these claims and explained the original purpose behind creating the show.
Arcane Season 2
Was Arcane profitable for Riot Games?
It cost Riot Games about $250 million to produce the two seasons of Arcane, League of Legends executive producer Paul Bellezza told Bloomberg. However, Netflix only paid the company $3 million per episode to air the show. It received a similar amount from its owner, Tencent, which got exclusive rights to distribute the series in China.
Considering Arcane had 19 episodes, these two deals amounted to less than half of its production budget. So the only way for Riot to recoup the costs was to have the show generate additional revenue streams for other parts of its business (mainly games like League of Legends, its mobile version Wild Rift, and Teamfight Tactics).
According to Bloomberg, the studio was fully armed with Arcane-themed digital items ahead of the Season 2 premiere. It wanted to avoid the mistake of the first season, when it didn’t prepare enough in-game cosmetics and events for fans of the series. At the time, Arcane brought many new players to League of Legends, but “not very many stuck around.”
The show’s popularity led November 2024 being one of the highest-grossing periods for the company. According to a Riot spokesperson, Season 2 is “on track to be at least break-even for us financially.”
However, Bloomberg claims that interviews with Riot employees and industry analysts indicate that Arcane “was a commercial failure.” The publication added that the show failed to “convert many new players or get existing players to spend more money on League of Legends.”
How did Riot co-founder react to analysts calling Arcane a commercial failure?
Riot co-founder Marc “Tryndamere” Merrill responded to these claims on Reddit, saying that “people who look at the world through a short-term, transactional, cynical lens really struggle to understand Riot.”
He added that while analysts believe shows like Arcane should motivate people to buy cosmetics and drive spending on games like LoL, it’s the opposite: “We sell skins to make things like Arcane.”
“Do we get everything right? Nope. But we are not focused on the short-term extraction of profits — we are focused on delivering exceptional value to our audience over the long term, again and again and again,” Merrill said, adding that “Arcane crushed for players and so it crushed for us.”