Overwatch League guarantees its players a minimum salary of $50k, in addition to other benefits. Fed up with the instability they often faced as smaller scale professional gamers, esports players began pursuing opportunities that provided more security and less reliance on prize money, something that contracts with professional teams would ultimately offer in the form of salaries. As more and more money began flowing into the competitive gaming scene, professional teams began forming. Sponsors and investors were still afraid to invest substantial resources into esports, as they viewed gaming as a pastime for kids and teenagers, not an industry that has now grown to be larger than the film and music industries combined. Money was scarce in the early days of esports and living off non-guaranteed tournament winnings was not a viable solution for most. Until the early 2010s, it was a common occurrence for esports professionals to work a full-time job during the week, while competing in events on the weekends. Once travel, lodging, entry fees, and meal expenses are incurred, teams or individuals that fail to place well can often be left off worse financially than if they had simply stayed at home. Most major tournaments (as well as many smaller ones) require that participants travel to a physical venue that may be some distance away from where the team or the competitors are based. After all, if an esports player or organization fails to do well at a given tournament, they may end up losing money by attending. While prize pools have existed in competitive gaming since the early 80s, it has seen its importance fall fairly precipitously in modern competitive gaming given concerns with the viability of such a mechanism as more and more investors in the space push for longer-term and more stable vehicles to generate returns for their investments. Prize pools tend to be more prevalent in single-player focused titles, however, team competitions in major tournaments (such as Dota 2’s The International) often share prize pools with the players who competed on behalf of the organization. If a player places high enough in a tournament, they receive a portion of the tournament’s prize pool – similar to conventional sports such as golf or tennis. Prize money is the oldest and simplest form of making money as a professional gamer. Prize money is the oldest form of making money in pro gaming. In general, there are five primary sources of income for professional gamers: prize money, salaries, sponsorships, live-streaming, and video-on-demand content. With the esports industry growing at significant and sustained levels year-over-year ( with the market having broken the $1 billion barrier in 2019), the existence of full-time competitive esports athletes has exploded – especially as increased competition has exacerbated the need for around the clock training and management of top talent. Today, esports is flush with money thanks to an explosion of private capital and increasingly deep pocketed publishers. In addition, 2019’s Fortnite World Cup showed an entire generation (and perhaps more importantly, their parents) that there is serious money in competitive video gaming when then 16 year-old Kyle ‘Bugha’ Giersdorf won $3 million in front of a packed Arthur Ash Stadium.Īs gaming has grown its footprint in the zeitgeist, so too have the opportunities to generate a successful career from what has historically been viewed by many as nothing more than a waste of time. In addition to sanctioned, competitive play, there has been a dramatic uptick in the number of individuals who have established careers live-streaming video game content on popular sites such as Twitch and YouTube. However, in the last ten years, esports has exploded in popularity, as evidenced by Riot Games’ League of Legends Championship Series establishing itself as the third most popular sport in the United States amongst 18-34 year olds, only behind the National Football League and the National Basketball Association. The esports industry itself was still in its infancy, and competitive gaming was little known outside a core group of highly engaged players and fans. As recently as a decade ago, earning a living playing videos games was considered nothing more than a pipe dream – with limited monetization avenues not just for players, but for game developers and publishers as well.
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