The South Korean club doubles its revenue in 2025 and edges toward break-even. Despite that, half of the investment is already considered lost. A look back at RedForce's accounts.
Team Dynamics became Nongshim RedForce in 2020 after the South Korean food and beverage group acquired 88 % of the team for approximately $6.77M, a price that notably covered the transition to the LCK's franchised (and therefore paid) model.
Five fiscal years later, here's everything you need to know about the accounts of the entity operating the RedForce brand.
Who are we talking about?
Nongshim E-Sports, incorporated on October 6, 2020, and 95 %-owned by Nongshim Co. (a food-industry heavyweight listed on the Seoul stock exchange).
In concrete terms, the company today operates rosters in the LCK, VCT Pacific (via the acquisition of Sin Prisa Gaming), PUBG Mobile, Honor of Kings, and FC Online.
The club also runs a network of 110 PC rooms under the "Red Force PC Arena" brand as of end-2025.
That's where the growth comes from: RedForce has gone from a single-title LCK club to a multi-title structure with two tier-1 global slots (LCK + VCT Pacific). And it's precisely this change of scale that explains what we're about to see in the numbers.
The numbers
The revenue trend over three years tells the story of the pivot:
Revenue doubled in a single year, rising from $2.70M to $5.30M. The acquisition of Sin Prisa in November 2024 adds a franchised VCT Pacific slot to the structure, bringing with it media-rights revenue, prize money, and associated sponsorship income. The integration delivers its full effect on the 2025 financial year.
Net result swings back to −$0.99M for the very same reasons that drove revenue up: the operating costs of a tier-1 international slot and of the new rosters absorbed all of the additional margin generated.
The debt structure has been radically cleaned up: liabilities were reduced and equity nearly doubled. A clean-up driven by a $2.71M cash injection to finance the Sin Prisa acquisition and strengthen the balance sheet.
Thanks, noodles
This was the one not to miss in the report.
Every year, Nongshim (the parent) buys marketing and visibility services from its own esports subsidiary — which, given the company's officially registered activity (pro-gamer promotion and advertising), likely covers Shin Ramyun branding on jerseys, product activations, digital content, and stream placements.
In 2023, two-thirds of Nongshim RedForce's revenue came from its parent company.
That dependency has sharply decreased, as 73 % of the 2025 revenue now comes from external sources: third-party sponsors, VCT Pacific and LCK broadcast rights, prize money, merchandising, and revenue from the PC Arena chain.
In absolute terms, the Nongshim marketing flow has grown, but the club has finally built an external revenue base that exceeds what its owner pays it.
Nongshim put more than ramen in the pot
Out of the $11.83M invested over the years, $5.55M have already been written off in Nongshim's accounts — nearly half. In concrete terms, the group's accountants decided twice, in 2023 and again in 2024, that this money would likely never come back.
In accounting jargon, this is called an impairment: the moment a company officially acknowledges that what it bought is now worth less than what it paid for it. A group does not make that call lightly — it's a bookkeeping gesture that means "we've given up on recovering this money".
There's still some goodwill, though: $0.65M remains on the consolidated books, roughly representing the intangible value of the RedForce brand beyond its physical assets.
It's ready!
$5.30M in revenue, a contained deficit, and external revenue that has quadrupled in two years: Nongshim RedForce is keeping its head above water operationally while progressively freeing itself from its dependency on the parent company.
How much longer will it take for the external business (LCK, VCT Pacific, PC rooms, merchandising) to replace the $1.45M of intra-group marketing paid every year by Shin Ramyun? Until that tipping point is reached, the raccoon mascot Pori will keep carrying the logo of Korea's most iconic ramen onto the world's esports stages — and that's probably the best marketing deal Nongshim has signed in the last twenty years.
Great article from LebronHajj