Ninjas in Pyjamas laying off operational esports roles in Sweden. Which is what the esports profitability crisis looks like. Of course like any layoffs the organization framed it "carefully", calling it a "difficult decision to eliminate some operational roles for esports in Sweden" while insisting the teams themselves are "staying where they are" and that nobody was asked to relocate. What sits underneath the polished language is the same brutal issue that is destroying the esports, which NiP itself names plainly when it talks about "the inherent lack of profitability that plagues the wider esports industry." When an org this storied is trimming its home-country esports operation, the competitive business clearly isn't paying for itself.
One look at Nasdaq tells you the story. The parent company went public on Nasdaq in July 2024 at roughly $9 a share and now trades closer to $0.74, a collapse that tells you the market isn't buying esports as a standalone business either. In response, NIP Group has diversified aggressively into things that have nothing to do with winning IEM or Majors, leaning heavily into Bitcoin mining and digital infrastructure alongside the talent agency, event production, and the esports-hotel and games-publishing verticals CEO Hicham Chahine has been building out. The competitive teams are increasingly the brand on the door rather than the engine in the back. Esports is the heritage, the brand but not the money generators.
The Abu Dhabi Backdrop the Statement Tiptoes Around
There is a relocation issue in the midst of this as well. Back in April, reporting out of Sweden indicated that NiP had issued redundancy notices to its entire Swedish workforce as part of a plan to centralise operations in Abu Dhabi, where NIP Group already keeps its global headquarters under a five-year deal with the Emirati government worth up to around 440 million SEK, roughly $47 million, tied to specific revenue and performance milestones.
The May statement still insists they will "continue to have their homebases in the most competitive markets".
Why a Heritage Brand Is the Canary Here
The annoying part is Ninjas in Pyjamas name carries a weight within the industry. NiP isn't a venture-funded org that overextended in the 2021 boom, it's a founding institution of Swedish Counter-Strike with a quarter-century of history, and watching it cut Swedish operational staff to satisfy the same balance-sheet math that's hit everyone else is the clearest signal yet that legacy buys you nothing in this economy. Right now, the orgs that survive are the ones diversifying away from competition as fast as they can, chasing crypto, talent management, anything that books revenue the teams can't. For the laid-off staff in Stockholm, the distinction between "eliminating roles" and "relocating to Abu Dhabi" is academic, the jobs are gone either way. The uncomfortable read is that NiP is doing what it has to do to outlast a sector that still can't figure out how to make its core product profitable, and the heritage that built the brand is now just the part being asked to cost less.
This is the broken economy of esports, and I feel we are reaching to a breaking point. Many organizations are having issues, and it is not getting better, we are still far from solving the economics of esports. The general consensus is esports organizations needs to be leaner and have active ventures besides competing, however this hinders grassroots level esports the most but at the same time they survive one way or another maybe their business model is the most sustainable.
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