- Psyonix will add an Esports Shop to Rocket League this month.
- The shop will sell in-game items featuring the branding of Rocket League Championship Series (RLCS) teams, and share a cut of the revenue with organizations.
- RLCS Season 7, which has a $1M USD prize pool and introduces the South American region, begins league play this weekend.
An in-game shop that sells esports team-branded items will be added to Rocket League 
on April 16, developer Psyonix
announced this week.
First revealed in November, the in-game Esports Shop will sell items featuring the branding of organizations that compete in the Rocket League Championship Series, with a cut of the revenue shared with each respective team. Psyonix has not yet disclosed how item sales revenue will be split with teams.
Further details on which teams will be included in the initial pilot program, as well as what kinds of items will be sold, will be announced next week. Psyonix originally promised to launch the Esports Shop by the end of the RLCS Season 7 World Championship, but it’s going live on the earlier end of that expectation: the season begins regular-season league play this weekend.
The Esports Shop was originally announced in the wake of simmering frustration from RLCS organizations, as detailed in an Esports Observer feature last November. Sources in and around teams suggested that one or more organizations planned to leave professional Rocket League due to the lack of a revenue-sharing model and a lack of communication from Psyonix on the matter.
FlyQuest
, Fnatic , FlipSid3 Tactics , and Red Reserve all parted ways with their Rocket League teams during the offseason, although Team SoloMid also entered the RLCS by picking up a prominent unsigned team.
Related Article: Psyonix and ELEAGUE on How New Deal Can Elevate Rocket League Esports
In March, Psyonix vice president of publishing Jeremy Dunham shared an update on the Esports Shop with The Esports Observer, and suggested that it will evolve over time:
“We’re still putting the finishing touches on all of our agreements with the organizations and the rollout plan, etc, but we’ve made significant progress since we first talked about it,” said Dunham. “We think that the teams and orgs are going to be pretty satisfied with the first offering that we’re going to have for fans, and then our main goal with that is also to be able to learn from that and find out what our audience is reacting to, what the orgs like, and what the fans like—and then make sure that each iteration of the [esports items] store afterwards continues to improve on what we’ve learned.”
