It’s every gamer’s dream to become an esports professional gamer and get paid for doing what they love. Fortunately, becoming a professional gamer is quite possible these days. You, too, can earn money by playing video games professionally. But where will that money come from? Who pays professional gamers? That’s precisely what we will be trying to answer here.
Team Organizers
The most common place professional gamers get paid is the team organizers for whom the gamer is playing for. Team organizers gather talented gamers and build a professional esports team. The team organizers make money if the gamers perform well in tournaments, so they have them compete in large-scale tournaments. For competing in tournaments and playing for a specific team, the team organizers pay the professional gamers a monthly salary.
Tournament Prize Money
The other common place that professional gamers get paid is through tournament prize money. However, for gamers that compete in esports games that are not team-based, tournament prize money is probably the only place they are going to get paid. But for outstanding players, there is a chance that they can also get high-paying brand endorsement deals.
Live Streaming Services
Live Streaming is getting more and more popular. It is one of the most common post-retirement ventures that professional gamers go towards. Not only that but a lot of professional gamers engage in live streaming during their careers. However, depending on the contract with the team organizers, it is possible that professional players won’t be allowed to live stream while under a contract with a certain team.
Professional gamers that are really good usually have a large audience that wants to watch them play. So when these players start live streaming on different platforms, they attract millions of views. For these views, live streaming service providers give those professional players huge sums of money.
Who Pays Team Organizers?
Since the most common place that professional gamers get paid is team organizers, it begs the question, who pays the team organizers? If team organizers are paying professional gamers some money, they need to earn some more money to be able to pay the professional players and remain profitable. The players also get to keep the tournament prize money, so who pays the team organizers?
As we have already mentioned, team organizers run a business, and the teams that they have built are their businesses. As team organizers acquire talented gamers and they perform well in tournaments, more and more brands start offering sponsorships and brand deals for the teams. These sponsors are the ones who pay team organizers, which allows them to pay professional gamers.
Esports Fans
There is another person that pays professional gamers. It’s actually not one person, but it’s a collection of people. We are talking about esports fans. You might be wondering, how can fans pay professional gamers. Well, it is actually the fans that make up the whole economics of esports. If it wasn’t for the fans, it would have been super hard for esports teams and organizers to remain profitable.
Just think about it, it is the fans who buy the tickets, it is the fans who see the sponsored brands and then buy products from those brands, and it is the fans who buy merchandise from team organizers. So in a way, the whole esports industry depends on the fans that keep loving the esports scene. So, just remember, if you engage with esports in any way, you are an important part of esports.
