02/01/2019
Professional Gaming: The Money
If you're not a fan of video games, the idea of watching someone else play a game for hours probably doesn't appeal. However, there is an entire industry built upon this form of entertainment and professional gamers are profiting in a major way.
For perspective, in 2018, the top ten prize pools for eSports tournaments totaled over $131M (1). The top earning eSports tournament player, KuroKy, had winnings of $3.55M (2). That would place him at 27th for top winnings in the PGA if he were playing golf (3). Not bad for someone who played video games for a living, but eSports tournaments are not where the real money is for professional gaming.
To appreciate the amount of money earned while gaming, we need to look to Twitch, the game streaming portal or virtual stadium, rather than any massive stadium used for gaming tournaments. For viewership, streamers can have a few thousand concurrent viewers for less well known streamers, or up to 60k concurrent viewers for top players like Ninja. That’s a major league football stadium full of viewers, but in the middle of an average Wednesday, and then again on Thursday, and so on.
Streamers, the gamers who show their realtime game play, make money through donations, ads, subscriptions, and sponsorships. Donations are like tips and nearly 100% of that money goes to the streamer. Top streamers can make around $1k in tips for a 4 hour streamed video. Subscriptions earn the top streamers 75% of the $5 monthly subscription and that adds up to about $500k per month for Twitch’s top earner, Ninja. When combined with ad revenue and sponsorships, Ninja’s annual income was around $10M in 2018 (4, 6).
Some may argue that Ninja is an outlier and that most streamers are making nowhere near that amount of money. That’s fair, but consider this: The top ten streamers for subscriber count have well over 20k subscribers per month, or well over $70k per month in subscription revenue. Add in the donation money per stream and it’s easy for top tier streamers to make over $100k per month, just from those two revenue streams. YouTube, ads, and sponsorships make significant contributions to their income as well. The real math around streamer income is tough to pin down because most of the information isn’t public. But, suffice it to say, watching someone else play a video game online has become a thing in a major way (5).
When talking to kids in my practice about professional gaming, some are quite aware that this could be their golden ticket. However, parents should understand that success in the eSports and streaming arenas is as rare as success in the professional sports arena.
1. https://esportsobserver.com/10-biggest-prize-pools-2018/
2. https://moneyinc.com/the-20-richest-esports-gamers-in-the-world/
3. http://www.espn.com/golf/moneylist/_/year/2018
4. https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/31/tech/ninja-fortnite-stream/index.html
5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m5P_n5njCQ
6. https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/how-ninja-made-10m-revenue-in-2018-full-breakdown-272436
