Professional Video Gamers – Making Millions From E-Sports

e sports team playing

Imagine a professional sportsman earning a huge sum of money. You wouldn’t bat an eyelid, as they clearly put in vast amounts of hard work, time and effort in to getting noticed by scouts, along with all the training and press coverage they have to endure.

Well what if the exact same process was applied to the growing number of professional gamers? You’d be sceptical as to why they’d be getting all this attention for, when it comes down to it, playing a video game.

Well, the time has finally come where the term ‘sports’ doesn’t have to be restricted to a pitch or playing field. The social stigma of playing video games such as League of Legends or DOTA (Defence of the Ancients) is starting to disappear as the culture of gaming championships becomes more and more of a grand spectacle with the impending, and somewhat under appreciated rise of E-Sports.

The Games

league of legends logo

Just as they are many different competitive sports played professionally, the genre of games classed as E-Sports are varied.  Genres of games that are played as E-Sports include, fighting games, First Person Shooters and Sports Games.  However, the real stand out genres of the E-Sports community by far are Real Time Strategy and Multi Online Battle Arena games.

These two genres of games are the where the money of the E-Sports profession starts to come in to play, the main culprits being StarCraft, Dota (Defence of the Ancients) and League of Legends. This is down to them all using team based gameplay mechanics, which is where the ‘sport’ part of E-Sports really starts to come in to play.

The Gamers

Gamers. The sportsman of the modern day. And just as a sportsman such as a footballer earns a whopping sum of money for kicking a ball about and falling over dramatically, these gamers earn thousands of dollars in prize money alone, even before factoring in sponsorship deals and streaming revenue!

Take Korean, Lee Jae Dong for example. Known as ‘Jaedong’ in the E-Gaming community, Lee made huge sums of cash from playing two games from the StarCraft series and is renowned as one of the worlds best players. He made exactly $519,086.72 in prize money from 52 tournaments, averaging out at  just under $10,000 per competition!

 Lee Jae Dong

Danil ‘Dendi’ Ishutin, who hails from Ukraine ,managed to make $200,000 in a single Dota tournament, along with $255,615.83 he made from 42 other events!

danylo dendi ishutin

Another Korean player who goes by the name ‘Flash’ (otherwise known as Lee Young Ho) who also plays StarCraft has earned  $447,016.47 from 47 tournaments. Admittedly not quite as much as Jaedong, but when you consider that he made $269,972.27 of that before he turned 18, he’s not doing bad for himself!

flash youngho lee

It’s a Team Sport

Just like Football and Rugby, E-Sports such as Dota and league of Legends require a team effort – not a huge squad of 15 or 11 – but a team all the same. These teams will be crafted by coaches who recruit the best players they can find, who then train together daily in order to become a force to be reckoned with. Some countries even have the teams live together so that they can increase the closeness in the players.

An E-Sports Team House Where They Train Together
An E-Sports Team House Where They Train Together

 

Some of you may be thinking “why are people recruiting gamers to coach them?” But is it not the same as a Football coach recruiting a star player for their team? In principle, its exactly the same.

An Olympic Sport?

Back in 2014, the Copperbox Arena  became the host to Gfinity G3, one of the UK’s largest E-Sports and online gaming tournaments, in which professional teams from all over the world compete. This may sound a little familiar to another sporting event that brings countries together to compete…the Olympics, anyone?

It may seem far-fetched now, but what’s to say that future Olympic events can’t include E-Sports? The players get all the same treatment that any other class of athlete would, so why leave all their hard work and dedication to their chosen game to independent tournaments all the time? E-Sports competitions fill out huge stadiums, imagine that at Rio 2016?

The Crowd At The League of Legends World Championships 2014
The Crowd At The League of Legends World Championships 2014

Good Game

It’s still quite baffling to think of the huge sums of money these people can earn from essentially doing what everyone loves to do when they’re sat at home relaxing.

If you’ve enjoyed our look at E-Sports, be sure to check us out on Facebook and Twitter for more content, and let us know what you think about the amounts of money these gamers are earning. If you’re still hungry for more video game knowledge, check out our timeline of the journey from 2D gaming all the way to the prospect of virtual reality.



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