VK Group announced deal value of selling Virtus.pro in 2022
2023-03-17 11:05:00VK Group revealed the sum they received for selling Virtus.pro to Armenian investor Aram Karamanukyan. According to company's financial report for 2022, it received 174 mln rubles ($2.9 mln at the time the deal was announced) for the sale of esports organization.
Report states that book value of this asset and related capital was calculated as 161 mln rubles, or $2.7 mln at the time the deal was announced in September. The company noted that the deal resulted in profit of 13 mln rubles ($217k).
The report also mentions that VK Group sold EPICENTR (Cyprus) Ltd. and ESFORCE AGENCY Ltd. for 47 mln rubles ($613k by the current exchange rate) in the first quarter of 2023. The new owner of those didn't announce the purchase. Key assets list on ESforce site still includes marketing agency and Epic Esports Events, the company which was organizing Epicenter series of events.
CS:GO remains the only major esports title where this deal didn't result in Virtus.pro teams being allowed to play under its tag yet. The players still have to compete as Outsiders instead. After VP got its tag back in R6: Siege and started selling team skins again, we asked ESL to comment on this. According to the company statement, 6 months after the sale, they are "in the process of finalizing" the review of the changes in the structure and ownership of Virtus.pro.
ESL is in an interesting position, as the company will soon host a Major in Dota, title where VP is allowed to compete under its name by Valve. If the team will qualify, it remains to be seen what policy will be chosen by TO, and how consistent it will be over different games.
In September, Virtus.pro announced its relocation to Armenia after the org was sold. Aram Karamanukyan, the new investor, was completely unknown in esports industry before. While in the end VP managed to convince policy makers in most esports titles, not everyone believed that this sale was real, and signing ex-CEO of ESforce Nikolay Petrossian as CEO of VP didn't help the situation.
