After a rather disappointing 2023 LEC campaign, KOI’s League of Legends team might have secured a key piece of the puzzle for next year’s attempt at a championship run.
The organization has reportedly re-signed superstar mid laner Emil “Larssen” Larsson to a whopping four-year contract extension that will last until 2027, according to esports reporter Alejandro Gomis.
This move will give KOI a premier talent to build around for the upcoming season. He will be one of the few players to have signed a four-year deal with an LEC team since the league allowed long-term contracts to be signed in 2021.
The 23-year-old veteran has played under the Rogue-KOI banner since 2019, when he helped the team’s Academy squad win the inaugural Ultraliga Playoffs. After joining Rogue’s main roster that following summer, he has become a staple member of the team and one of the best players in the league.
Larssen has only won a single LEC trophy but has always been a driving force for Rogue and KOI as they continuously push for a top-three finish in the region. This year, however, his team struggled to find success on Summoner’s Rift, stumbling to multiple bottom-five finishes and only ending as a top-three team once during the 2023 Winter Playoffs.
This past summer was KOI’s worst performance yet, with the team bouncing out of contention with back-to-back eighth-place finishes. They weren’t able to rise to the challenge of the league’s new format and were never able to maintain their form or string together a hot streak like many other top squads.
Fans are, however, a bit skeptical about the future of KOI after multiple reports have suggested the organization is suffering from major financial issues that have prevented it from paying salaries for players, content creators, and even its LEC license. Reports also claim that KOI’s current co-owner Ibai Llanos has had to pay upwards of three million euros of his own funds to compensate for these reported financial problems.
