Karmine Corp knocked out Team Secret with a 2-1 victory in a best-of-three elimination match at the Esports World Cup 2026 on July 15, and the result matters far beyond the League of Legends bracket. The match, played at Paris Expo Porte de Versailles, was part of lower-bracket Group B action in a tournament carrying a total prize pool exceeding $75 million.
The EWC’s League of Legends segment features 16 teams competing for a $2 million slice of that purse, and the entire event is now operating under a regulatory environment that, for the first time, explicitly invites licensed cryptocurrency firms to sponsor esports teams in France.
Paris changes the game for crypto and esports
This year’s EWC, running from July 6 to August 23, is the first edition hosted outside Saudi Arabia. France has updated its laws to allow licensed crypto firms to sponsor esports organizations.
No specific cryptocurrency tokens or platforms were directly tied to the Karmine Corp vs. Team Secret match. But the structural conditions are now in place for those deals to materialize.
