No word yet on whether or not this will affect the event's future

A financial report from Hearts United Group, the organization that put on EVO Japan back in January, reveals an overall loss of 124 million yen for the event's first run.

According to Mad Mans Cafe this loss (which translates to a little over 1.13 million dollars in US currency) was due in part because of a last minute change in venue paired with a free entry policy:

"Hearts United's media division originally intended to run the event at Akihabara UDX, but after experimenting a test run event [sai] in May 2017, decisions were made to run Evo Japan's preliminaries at a larger venue, undoubtedly mounting on the event's budget which also did not recoup from visitors due to its free-entry policy.

Preliminaries were held at Ikebukuro's Sunshine city Bunka-kaikan venue, a wide-floor venue commonly known amongst the pop-culture generation for doujin events such as Sunshine Creation and the soon to come Pixiv Market. The finals were held at Akihabara UDX as originally intended."

Gamers in Japan are currently dealing with fairly strict anti-gambling laws that have made major eSports competitions more difficult than in other regions of the world.

Given that fighting game eSports is still in its infancy, monetary losses are not widely uncommon or unexpected. We have yet to hear from organizers as to the future of EVO Japan given this recent news, though a representative did state during closing ceremonies that the event would be returning.

Thank you to zUkUu for sending this in.