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Los Ratones, the esports organisation registered in the UK by British content king Caedrel, have today won the EMEA Masters Winter 2025 final.
They defeated French esports organisation Ici Japon Corp. Esport 3-0 in a best-of-five grand final to make history.
Los Ratones have become the first UK-registered esports organisation to win the EMEA Masters (formerly EU Masters) in the competition’s history.
Leicester’s Haymarket Theatre hosted the first EU Masters in 2018, with the tournament rebranding to EMEA Masters in late 2022. It is now in its eighth year.
This Winter 2025 season was the 15th EMEA Masters’ tournament, and the first to be won by an organisation from the Northern League of Legends Championship (NLC), the EMEA Regional League (ERL) for the UK, Ireland, Nordics and Malta.
LR support player Rekkles also became the first player to win EMEA Masters in two different roles (he previously won it with French org Karmine Corp as ADC before they joined the LEC).
Los Ratones won the NLC Winter 2025 finals in Nottingham at the start of this month, before starting their EMEA Masters run in Group D.
There, they beat NightBirds before falling to Karmine Corp Blue in the upper bracket and beating E Wie Einfach Esports in the lower bracket. They then beat SupperMassive 3-2 and Team Phantasma 3-2 in the playoffs to reach today’s grand final.
Today’s EMEA Masters Winter 2025 grand final also drew some 470,000 peak viewers, according to Esports Charts:
Now LR’s roster of Baus, Velja (finals MVP), Nemesis, Crownie and Rekkles can celebrate.
Caedrel on Los Ratones EMEA Masters Winter 2025 win
“Damn, that’s it, we’ve won everything we can!” Los Ratone sfounder Caedrel said on stream after the win. “We went through some crazy hard times. Shoutout to you guys (the fans) for the support.”
“It’s crazy, the boys smurfed it,” he told the talent on the broadcast after the win.
“We put a lot of work in and had a bad period for a couple of weeks, but a lot of meetings and talks, and the boys put in a lot of effort on-stream and off-stream. We got better at sequences, and when we beat SuperMassive in the fifth game, everything came together.
“We have a lot of experienced and smart players, and our style changes depending on which teams we’re playing against. We’re flexible.
“I used to play in the ERLs in 2016 ish and some UK LANs, I never thought I’d have the power to grow a team, then I went into full-time streaming, then we got a bunch of friends/family together and we’re winning EMEA Masters in the first split.
“I want to give a massive shoutout to the players, they are so hardworking. They’re tough on themselves but they grind.”
“I used to play in the ERLs in 2016 ish and some UK LANs, I never thought I’d have the power to grow a team, then I went into full-time streaming, then we got a bunch of friends/family together and we’re winning EMEA Masters in the first split.”
Caedrel, Los Ratones
Some of the players commented:
Kieran Holmes-Darby, GM of Los Ratones, added:
And the NLC account tweeted:
What’s next for Los Ratones after EMEA Masters Winter 2025 win?
Los Ratones will prepare for the next season of the NLC, the Spring 2025 season, which kicks off in early April.
They will have the chance to win that, and if they do so, qualify for the Spring EMEA Masters.
Los Ratones have also flirted with the idea of reaching the upper-tier LEC. To do so, they would need to buy a franchise slot from another team.
LEC slots were reportedly worth around €10m when the LEC launched in 2019. Schalke sold their slot to BDS three years ago for a reported €26.5m, and Karmine Corp bought the Astralis LEC slot two years ago, with Astralis valuing the slot at a reported similar value.
“Our team functions a lot differently [to other teams]. We can keep winning EMEA Masters, but I don’t know where we’re going to go next!” Caedrel said.
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
