Arcane may have been a Netflix hit, but Riot spent way more money on it than it got paid for it, or made from it

Arcane has quickly become one of Netflix's most recognisable animated streaming shows, but Riot Games has struggled to have it make financial sense.

Whether or not you care about League of Legends, it’s hard to deny the impact Arcane - the animated series inspired by the game’s world and characters - has had on the streaming world.

Arcane was once called the most expensive animated series of all time, with its two seasons costing over $250 million to produce and market. If that figure sounds big, that’s because it is. More than that, however, it’s well beyond what everyone else involved has paid Riot for it.

That’s because Riot reportedly spent a lot of its own money on actually producing the show, and according to a new Bloomberg report, the production ran over budget. Though some rumours suggest that multiple seasons were in the works, the reality is that Arcane’s second season will be its last, and it likely has a lot to do with those production costs.

The budget news is particularly brutal considering Netflix paid Riot around $3 million per episode, and parent company Tencent paid $3 million to air the show in China. All told, that’s less than half of the show’s total costs.

The report also revealed that, while Riot had ambitious plans to transform itself into a media giant with the help of Arcane, the studio didn’t have a solid plan to recoup the costs of the show before it aired. A Riot spokesperson confirmed to Bloomberg that Arcane wasn’t profitable on its own, but it helped the business in other ways. They also said that the second season is “on track to at least break-even for us financially.”

Enjoy it while it lasts, folks. | Image credit: Riot/ Netflix

It’s important to keep in mind that, unlike most projects of this nature, Arcane was funded, developed and produced by Riot. The studio wanted full control of the IP and production, so it didn’t follow the easier (and more lucrative) licensing model. That also makes Riot’s decision to pause its other in-development entertainment projects, and stop working on Arcane itself, make sense.

More interesting than the raw figures, Arcane reportedly didn’t bring in enough new players to League of Legends, or convince existing ones to spend more on the game. Part of that was caused by the limited window the show’s creators gave Riot designers to create in-game skins and themed events around it (an issue the studio solved with the second season), but it also has a lot to do with the complex nature of the game which deterred a lot of the new players who signed up after the first season blew up.

For now, it doesn’t look like Arcane will be followed by any other shows inspired by the world of League of Legends.