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Epic Games' Fortnite exploded onto the gaming scene in 2017, and this year it joins the world of esports. This summer, Fortnite World Cup will bring the best players from around the world to New.

What Video Game Earned The Most Money 2018

The rise of eSports has ushered in a new and unprecedented era for the gamers who play eSports professionally, also known as pro gamers. What used to be a casual pastime or hobby has now turned into a legitimate career path with the potential of earning some serious money. In a relatively short period, pro gamers can go from playing video games in their parents’ basement, to playing competitively in sold-out arenas in front of thousands of fans. But how much money do pro gamers make?

The highest paid gamers make more than $1 million annually, but the top pro league the salaries typically range from $50,000 to $350,000. However, that amount is significantly different for less well-known leagues. There are many ways that professional gamers can make a living, and it’s not just from prize winnings. These include the following:

eSports team salary
Twitch subscriptions
Twitch donations
Ad revenue
Affiliate marketing
Sponsorships

eSports earnings are plentiful but hard to track

When it comes to understanding exactly how much money pro gamers make, it’s essential first to know that a lot of figures related to earnings like salaries, sponsorships, streaming ad revenue, and more is not public record. The only thing associated with eSports that is publicly shared is the prize winnings that players earn for winning competitions like tournaments and leagues. It’s pretty easy to find out how much pro gamers receive for winning as these figures are either published directly on the competition website or on www.esportsearnings.com.

Other professional sports like football, basketball, and baseball all publish players salaries and bonuses. Contracts, for the most part, are not private and details of how much a player makes are easily discoverable. However, with eSports, it’s an entirely different situation. So while we can figure out bits and pieces of what pro gamers make, it’s hard to find the total and accurate full picture. In this article, we’ve done our best by putting together a ton of research and numbers to give you a better view of exactly how much pro gamers can make.

Fortnite earned record $2.4bn in 2018, the 'most annual revenue of any game in history' Fortnite boasts over 200 million players E pic Games battle royale phenomenon Fortnite earned 'the most.

Okay, so how much money do pro gamers make?

Glad you asked, so let’s start with diving into the various ways that eSports pro gamers try to secure the bag. Their income sources are similar to that of traditional pro athletes, who have salaries, sponsorships deals, etc. However, pro gamers also can make money in additional areas that pro athletes typically can’t, including streaming ad revenue and Twitch subscriptions.

Prize earnings

Some of the top money in eSports is earned through winning competitions. It’s no secret that pro gamers can score some serious cash in various tournaments and leagues around the world. Typically, the higher up a team finishes in a competition, the more the team wins. According to www.esportsearnings.com, in 2017 alone, pro gamers collected $113,834,986.30 in prize money. One of the top players, KuroKy took home over $2.4 million just by himself in 2017! And the top game in terms of highest payout of prize earnings was Dota 2 with $38 million. This was just about double the payout for the next closest game, CS:GO, which had $19.2 million. That’s a TON of money!

What Video Game Earned The Most Money 2018 Best

The top tournaments and leagues dish out quite impressive prize earnings to teams who not only win but even those who participate. For example, the 2018 International, which is the Dota 2 Championships, had a total prize pool of $25.4 million, giving out prize money all the way to the team that places in 18th place. I always lose my money at the casino. While the first place team got $11.1 million in prize money, the eighteenth place team earned $63,000. That $63k is still a significant amount of money and is more than what most average people bring home in a year with a full-time job. So teams don’t necessarily have to place first to bring back some serious cash.

These are no doubt some vast numbers, but not all pro gamers will make millions from winning tournaments and leagues. It’s true that there is a ton of money to be made through competing in tournaments and leagues, but the ones who get the biggest payouts are the elite pro gamers, like KuroKy, Faker, and Miracle. However, with over 17,000 active eSports gamers last year, the average prize earnings per player was $6,517.89. That’s entirely different from the numbers we threw out above, which are well into the millions. You can see the significant discrepancy between prize earnings that the top of the pack elite eSports gamers earn and what most other gamers make. It makes sense though, as this trend is also seen in other professional sports. For example, LeBron James and Kevin Durant, both elite NBA players, earn substantially more than a rookie just starting their first year in professional basketball.

The good news for all eSports pros is that the prize money amounts just keep getting higher and higher every year. Back in 2011, when eSports was really just in the beginning stages of popularity, the total prize earnings for the year was only $10.2 million. Only seven years later, that amount is now 11x more and is expected to keep climbing. Even the average earnings per player have doubled from $3k to $6k in that same timeframe. If eSports keeps growing at the same rate, we should expect to see these numbers continue to skyrocket over the next five to ten years.

Salaries

In eSports, a salary is the annual amount of money given to pro gamers on a pro eSports team. To put it simply, professional teams will pay their players a certain amount of money in exchange for their play. It’s the same thing you see in other professional sports, where a team signs players and pays those players to compete against other teams. The amount that teams pay their players in salaries varies quite a bit, even between players on the same team. The one certain thing is that the most elite players get paid the highest salaries.

Currently, there is a significant lack of transparency in eSports in regards to salary. It’s very rare for teams to publish the amount that they pay players. This makes it extremely difficult for pro gamers to determine what constitutes fair compensation. Some teams and leagues, however, have shared bits and pieces that help us determine an estimated salary earnings range. For example, back in 2015, one eSports team, called Ember, decided to release precisely how much they paid their players publicly. Their players made a base salary range of $57,000 to $65,000 per year.

On top of that, they gave bonus incentives that ranged from $10,000 to $27,000. So total earnings that they paid their players was between $70,000 and $92,000 per year. This was back in 2015, which is now a few years ago, so we know these salary figures have increased since then. The Overwatch League currently advertises on their website that the pro players in their league start out with a $50,000 minimum base salary. In addition to this, they also receive health care, retirement savings plans and get housing provided to them at no cost during the season.

In May of 2018, Forbes released an article