The guide, on How to Make Money from eSports, also labels the United States as the highest-earning country and Dota 2 the highest-paying game.
Aimed at both talented gamers and those who have an interest in eSports, content included uses historical data and cutting-edge insight to offer realistic guidance to those who dream of being the next MVP (Most Valuable Player).
Jesse “JerAx” Vainikka, from Finland made short of $2,500,00 last year, topping the five highest-earning players in 2018:
- Jesse “JerAx” Vainikka ($2,290,632)
- Johan “N0tail” Sundstein ($2,282,717)
- Sébastien “7CKNGMAD” Debs ($2,280,217)
- Topias “Topson” Taavitsainen ($2,249,842)
- Anathan “ana” Phan ($2,249,136)
2019 is set to be particularly profitable, with the highest-earner predicted to pocket $3,292,966 in winnings.
Top tips to being the best include:
- The qualities most appropriate for streaming and competing.
- Step by step guide on how to become a streamer or pro-league player.
- How to monetise channels.
- An overview of affiliate marketing.
- How to find your niche (as a streamer or player).
- How to get noticed and rise from a gamer to a pro-league player.
2018 proved to be a successful year for the top five highest-earning eSports players, who each took home an average of $2,270,509.
With prediction data, the average winnings of the top five players are set to rise by 39.6% from $2,270,509 in 2018 to $3,169,957 in 2019.
The highest-paying game in 2018 was Dota 2, which awarded a staggering $41,395,452 in prize winnings. Further success is apparent for Dota 2, which is forecasted as the highest-paying game for the next five years.
Your kids won’t stop talking about it, your friend hasn’t come out of his house all week because he’s addicted to it, some of the world’s biggest sports stars and youtubers are doing it. It’s not a drug, it’s a game; Fortnite, and with so many playing the game month to month, the creators are making quite a killing. Below Ken Wisnefski, CEO of digital marketing firm WebiMax, discusses the microtransaction element behind Fortnite’s big profits and the future of this clever new way of selling.
Like so many quarters fed into an arcade machine, an around-the-clock influx of outside cash has turned the video game industry into a revenue resource like no other. Whereas video games were once a one-time purchase rarely exceeding $50, we now have free-to-play offerings like “Fortnite” that can rake in millions. How is that possible? “Microtransactions” and “platform-based business models” allow gamers to customize their experience by spending real-world cash in exchange for in-game goodies. The fact that Fortnite developer Epic Games earned just shy of $300 million in April 2018 alone tells me a few things as a digital marketing expert, but chief among them is this: We’re not in Super Mario World anymore.
For the unacquainted, Fortnite is a co-op survival game that takes place in a “sandbox” universe and drew a record 3.4 million concurrent users in February 2018. On the revenue side of things, there are aspects of Fortnite that are free to download. There’s also a roughly $10 seasonal “Battle Pass” that’s optional, last for a few months and provides additional immersion. The microtransactions that I mentioned earlier – and the platform that makes this exchange possible – is a hotly-debated concept among gamers. In the case of Fortnite, many say Epic Games got it right and I agree.
“Rank your Battle Pass up before it expires, and you'll earn more than enough in-game cash to unlock the next Battle Pass,” a March 2018 GamesRadar.com article says. “That eliminates the dread of having to pay more and more cash to stay up-to-date in a living game, and it encourages you to keep playing for the whole season and into the next. So smart!”
The Emperor’s New Clothes
Microtransactions are, as the name suggests, a way for users to pay a nominal amount of real-world cash or in-game currency and receive small game-enhancing perks as a result. There are right and wrong ways to implement microtransactions into a game. The wrong way, as Electronic Arts (EA) learned in 2017, is to sell “loot boxes” to users that create an unfair playing field. This crisis came to a head upon the release of “Star Wars Battlefront II.”
“We’ve heard the concerns about potentially giving players unfair advantages. And we’ve heard that this is overshadowing an otherwise great game. This was never our intention. Sorry we didn’t get this right,” a statement from EA read following player backlash.
Only months later, “cosmetic-only” microtransactions were up and running again inside that galaxy far, far away. Back here on Earth, I think the majority of us can see the parallels between EA now selling “loot boxes” that don’t affect gameplay and what Fortnite has been doing since launch. In my experience in digital marketing, someone who wants to spend their own money on attainable goals should be able to do so. When you start toying with the framework, such as paid-for results at the top of a Google search page, then we need to throw in some disclaimers or other ways to give everyone equal footing.
The Conduit
Try and find Apple’s brick-and-mortar “App Store” in your neighborhood. We won’t wait around, because we all know it isn’t there. Slate reported in early 2018 that this non-physical outlet for iPhone programs earned $38.5 billion in 2017 and “is poised to double its 2015 revenues by some time in 2018.” What readers should understand is that there’s no longer a need to offer physical goods as the only way of making money. Today, we have people streaming their live feeds of Fortnite gameplay on the Twitch website and reportedly making $500,000 per month doing so. Amazon may be building local warehouses to help expedite shipping, but it started as an online-only book-ordering company and its CEO is now the richest man on Earth.
I find it helpful to think of ride-sharing services as a more tangible example of what digital platforms can offer: An actual good or service that’s obtained for a payment on a middle ground – or “platform,” if you will. I only have to look under my own roof, where kids are playing Fortnite, to see what microtransactions have evolved into and how in-game “V Bucks” can be spent on spiffy new avatar outfits.
The viewership of major sports championships such as the Premier League, Winter Olympics and the NFL has recently taken a substantial downturn. This poses the question, is the popularity of traditional sports on the decline? A recent study conducted by Limelight showed that young men are now watching esports more than traditional sports. In fact, esports is their second most preferred media source behind movies. The world of esports is growing rapidly, so we decided to delve into the statistics to find out just how big esports has become.
The increasing viewership of esports has led to major brands investing in this new and growing industry in the form of sponsorships, advertising and takeovers. Amazon purchased Twitch for $970m in 2015 and has promoted Twitch as the primary platform for esports ever since. It has been reported that by 2020, esports will overtake the NBA’s reported 400m fans worldwide, with estimates predicting that there could be 500m fans of esports around the world in the next two years. Approximately 11bn hours will be spent by fans watching all forms of esports, with 70m enthusiasts tuning in to watch championship finals through online streaming services such as YouTube Gaming and Twitch. That’s more than the current viewership of the NBA and MLB finals. Overall, esports has amassed more than 600 sponsors. Although esports may not be able to compete with other traditional sports when its comes to revenue from sponsorships just yet, they do have more in total. This shows how esports is growing financially and how this could grow and impact the market further in the future.
Due to this increase in popularity, advertisers have flocked to the platform in order to promote their brand or service. Reportedly, it won’t be long until esports overtakes traditional sports when it comes to yearly revenue. Revenue generated from esports is said to hit the £1.2bn mark by 2020, with viewing figures potential exceeding 600 million people.
Esports began truly growing in the early 90’s, as improvements to internet connectivity led to online gameplay becoming more user friendly and playable. Around the same time, the UFC was also beginning to grow and be recognised as a mainstream sport. Esports and the UFC are two of the most exciting and fastest growing sports today, but who earns the most? Pro-gamers or pro-athletes? We analysed the top 10 highest earning gamers and UFC fighters to find out do you earn more from playing video game or getting punched in the face competitively? We compared their overall earnings, and created an average based on how long they had been involved in the sport. Surprisingly, pro gamers dominate the yearly earnings list. The gamer Miracle, who plays Dota 2 professionally and competes in regular competitions is second on the list only behind UFC superstar Conor McGregor. Miracle has earned just over $1m per year since he began his journey in esports. Overall, there are 8 gamers who have earned an average of $600,000 per year since they start out in the sports, compared to only 2 UFC fighters earning over the same amount, Conor McGregor and Alistair Overeem.
The overall revenue of esports already matches that of Cricket’s Indian Premier League and Major League Soccer, but what about the overall prize pools on offer to competitors at events? The Dota 2: The International 2017 event, which was recently hosted in the KeyArena in Washington, boasted a prize pool of $17.5m. This was the biggest prize pool ever offered at a professional esports tournament and eclipses the current combined prize pool of other major sporting events, such as the Tour de France and the Cricket World Cup.
Does this mean that the next generation will dream of being behind a controller or out on the pitch? Betway predicted that 2018 is set to be another exciting year for esports.
