Can you get rich beating others at video games? Debunking eSports player winnings
Short answer: If you hit the top 100 globally, yes. But prize pools are trending backwards.
One of Australia’s largest eSports events, DreamHack, is being held in Melbourne this week — but you could be forgiven for not knowing much about it.
Despite a growing number of global fans, eye-popping prize pools and ongoing discussions around creating high school pathways for young eSports players, eSports is still an emerging field in Australia. We’re actually still debating whether eSports is legally considered a sport.
Part of the mythos around eSports is that if you get good enough, you can build a career — possibly even get rich — off beating others at video games. So is this the case? And if you crack the top 100 how much can you expect to earn?
Hold up… what even is an eSport?
Fair enough if you are new to the concept. It’s been growing in popularity, but the sector sells to its fans and doesn’t do a lot in the way marketing itself to the mainstream — other than creating this impression that people are making a killing off of it.
An eSports is essentially an umbrella term for the competitive play of a broad variety of video games. The easiest comparison — and my ham-fisted attempt at a sports analogy — is thinking of it like a variety of field events in an athletics carnival (long jump, high jump, discus). They all fall under one broad label, but athletes generally pick one event and focus on it. They may take their skills and change sport mid career, but generally only train for one game at a time.
Not all games are eSports. Only certain competitive titles make it to that level, and it’s usually through their popularity among everyday players. eSports games generally require quick thinking and reflexes. Some also overlay that with teamwork and strategic play. But being good at a shooter as opposed to a real-time strategy game are two very different skillsets.
Current top five eSports by prize pool:
CounterStrike (Team shooter)
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege (Team shooter)
Defence of the Ancients 2 [DOTA2] (Team real-time strategy)
Fortnite (Solo shooter)
Street Fighter (Solo fighting)
So where did this idea that you could hit the jackpot with eSports come from?
Likely from headlines for other eSport events — like most good myths there is some truth to it. While total prize pools for eSports events have greatly diminished over the past few years, they’ve previously been quite hefty.
The highest ever prize pool for an event was The International 2021 Defence of the Ancients 2 Championship, which total prize pool of $US40 million. The winning team five-player team (Team Spirit) took home $US18 million. Rough math says that’s around $US3.6 million per player, but that doesn’t account for the coach and other support services behind the team.
For comparisons’ sake, and to show how prizes pool totals are heading south, the 2023 equivalent of the same tournament offered a significantly reduced pot of $US3.38 million. Most 2023 eSports tournaments offered around $US2 million mark as a prize.
So what can eSports players actually earn?
Turns out, the winnings of individual eSports players are public. Doing the math, say you crack the top 100 highest earning eSports players globally, then your winnings will likely average out at around $US2.6 million over your career. Not bad at all. There are plenty of sports where athletes on compete on a global level earn a lot less — if anything at all.
But, let’s say you take up another sport, like Tennis or Golf — two equally popular sports that also award prize money — and crack the top 100 globally. Using the same method, averaging out the top you can expect to earn an average of $US21 and $US48 million respectively, over a much longer career too.
As I hinted, eSports players have much shorter careers than a lot of other athletes. Many only play competitively for around five years due to burnout or an inability to earn a sustainable income while playing. To train, most dedicate a minimum of five hours per day towards their chosen game. Given the shorter careers, many in the top 100 also earned the majority of their winnings over two good years of professional play.
It’s also based on raw winnings. This data also doesn’t take into account any other the other income earned from streaming income or sponsorship. But given Tennis and Golf players also capitalise on this, its still somewhat fair. Many eSports players exit the profession and go onto simply streaming the audience they amassed through competitive play and continue to earn a sustainable income doing so.
So, yes. If you crack the top 100 players you can make decent money as an eSports player. Even the last player on that list of earnings made over $US1 million.
But given you have to beat millions around the globe to crack the top 100 is $US2 million worth it?
Despite headlines about massive prize pools and big money flowing into the sector — advertising spend in eSports hit $US634 million in 2023 — up 128% over five years — it may not as lucrative as its may made out to be.
What I’m playing: Unicorn Overlord
(Going forward I’m going to try out embedding some micro-reviews on what I’m actually playing right now at the end of each edition to lighten things up. I do actually enjoy playing games, not just being critical about the industry! If you are after more of these, take a look at Tim Biggs and Alice Clarke’s Press Any Button weekly SubStack newsletter.)
Look… terrible name, great game.
Basic premise: You build an army and launch a campaign to reclaim a lost kingdom. It’s a fantasy military strategy game where you move units in and out of combat on a top-down birds-eye view map.
I’m about two thirds of the way through and I’ve really appreciated just how rich and complex the combat system is. It starts you off slow, with a few basic units and strategies and then gradually ramps up both the difficulty and amount of choices you make. Pro tip: Ignore the story and recruit everyone — regardless of what crime they’ve committed.
Give it a go if you enjoy: Fire Emblem Three Houses, XCOM 2, Tactics Ogre Reborn.
Available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X and Series S