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One of the interesting side effects to Riot’s franchising process for the LCS is that a
lot of salary information is being published.
That means for the first time, there’s a lot of really clear info about how much pro
players are actually making, so we figured it would be good fun to talk about.
Obviously there’s more than one income stream available for pro players, but thanks to Goldenglue
we’ve got some pretty reasonable estimates to use—though we won’t talk about his
personal salary as he preferred to keep it quiet.
To be honest with you guys, we’ve been really interested in making a video like this for
a while now, so if you guys like it we might even explore some more controversial money-related
topics in the future, like how much boosters make!
The first and most important thing we need to say is that pros can make hugely different
amounts of money.
It all depends on the individual, their performance and other value metrics like popularity.
It’s totally possible that some pros make less than 6 figures while others are earning
millions, so you can treat this as a bit of a disclaimer that not every pro will match
up perfectly with our estimates.
We’re really gonna focus on the different methods that pros use to make money, then
we’ll shift the perspective a bit and look at how the more popular pro players increase
that amount to reach the real high-tier salaries.
The first and most important revenue stream we want to talk about is team-based salary,
which makes up the majority of a pro player’s income.
This is also where you’ll find the most variance, since this amount is based on a
contract, and there’s a few different things that come into play when it comes to figuring
out how expensive that contract is going to be for the organisation.
The obvious factors are things like that player’s skill level or how popular they are with the
League community, but location plays a huge part too.
Different regions offer different salaries, and organisations will often pay a higher
sum to incentivize players to move to a different region.
For example, Korean player Impact was apparently offered a place on the SKT T1 Roster, but
rejected it to sign with Team Liquid for approximately $1 million dollars a year according to the
ESPN eSports podcast between Rachel Gu and Jacob Wolf.
This is of course a super high-tier salary and definitely way above the average, but
it definitely goes to show how much higher a salary can be offered to encourage players
to stay in one particular region over the other.
The highest salaries in the world are typically found in China.
The same podcast that we heard the rumors about Impact’s salary also claimed that
Looper, the South Korean Top Laner for Royal Never Give Up, was earning $750,000 last year.
At the time, this was higher than any player salary in North America, although the gap
has definitely been closing and NA is a clear cut second place for player salaries, to the
point where EU has been reportedly struggling to compete with NA bids.
Surprisingly, Korea is on average the region with the lowest salaries.
In fact, an investigation into player salaries in 2015 by the Korea e-Sports Association
(or Kespa as most of you will know it) found that the average salary of 40 League of Legends
players across the 8 Kespa teams was $57,717.
This average will have definitely increased since then, but it just goes to show how not
every pro player in the world is in a position where they can think about early retirement!
In fact, this was one of the motivating factors in Immortals CEO Noah Whinston pushing for
a public database that tracked player salaries.
With everything done behind closed doors, it’s entirely possible that many players
were being exploited, especially since there are no player agents and no union.
As you can see from these examples so far, the range of salaries for pro players is pretty
massive.
Lower tier pros can typically expect to earn around $50-80k a year, with the more notable
LCS players reaching around $150-300k.
Beyond that you’re really getting into the seriously noteworthy player bracket where
their insane skill or popularity can easily push a player’s value up from anywhere between
$700k and millions of dollars.
It’s worth keeping in mind that franchising is actually going to push these salaries even
higher, with all pro players and even academy pros being able to do really well for themselves
depending on the team.
Salaries are also going to become a lot more consistent, since organisations are going
to be held accountable so they can’t get away with not paying their players.
According to Goldenglue, most players don’t get any of the money directly from Riot stipends,
team sponsors or promotional events since it’s just a part of their contracted salary.
However, some players do get a percentage of merchandise revenue if it’s using their
brand, like on jersey sales for example, so popular players could potentially earn a little
extra here.
One other factor worth considering here is performance-based bonuses.
A lot of pro players contracts have stipulations where they are granted bonuses based on their
success.
This is typically done based on how much perceived risk there is to sign a player; so you could
sign a player with a less pricy yearly salary, meaning less risk for the organisation, but
strong showings from that player will give them bonuses and a potentially huge salary
if they do well.
One notable example of this is Reignover, who is cited as the highest salary in the
NA LCS with a $350,000 contract.
Compared to other high-tier salaries this might not seem THAT extreme, but Reignover’s
performance bonuses could ramp up to a solid $700-800k extra in a single year, which would
easily push him into the very top percentage of pro player salaries.
I know what you’re all thinking at this point; how much does Faker make?
According to Dot eSports, the world’s best player is apparently earning a cool $2.5 million
dollars for 2017.
That might sound like an absolutely insane sum of money, but compared to the other highest-paid
athletes it’s still a pretty humble amount.
That just goes to show that despite all the crazy growth in the eSports industry, it still
has a long way to go before it competes with established sports that have been around for
such a long time.
The next revenue stream we should definitely discuss is personal content, such as Youtube
videos or Twitch streams.
This is pretty easy to estimate because it uses very similar metrics to other content
creators.
Most of the money here comes selling advertisement space on content or gaining subscribers on
Twitch.
Dot eSports estimated Bjergsen’s content income in 2015 to be around 20-40k a month,
not including his Youtube, which is likely to be negligible compared to his streams so
we’d be surprised to hear it earns more than 5k a month.
Bjergsen serves as a pretty good baseline for estimating other pro player’s earnings
from content.
It really all boils down to how many people watch your content, so people with similar
viewership will earn similar amounts, and that will scale up or down in a pretty linear
fashion based on any particularly player’s popularity.
Bjergsen might be the most popular NA LCS streamer, but he doesn’t stream as often
as other players and can be pretty inconsistent with content.
Working as content creators, pro players can really only maximize their earnings during
the off-season when SoloQ is sufficient as a practice tool.
Most pros we’ve talked to say that streaming Solo Queue is nowhere near as good practice
as simply playing SoloQ off stream though, since they can dedicate more of their attention
to streaming, so you can also consider personal content to be a pretty seasonal income stream.
Still, it can definitely line the pockets of pro players in a significant way if they
are dedicated to it.
The most popular pros are likely pulling in $50k or more a month on this kinda stuff if
they have high viewership and stream frequently, but the less popular players are likely still
reaching a good $5-10k a month which is still a substantial amount of money, especially
for a side income.
There’s also tournament winnings to consider, with prize pools being typically split as
15% for players and 10% for the organization and coaching staff according to Goldenglue.
Although events like MSI, Worlds and the LCS splits can have pretty sizable prize pools,
it’s important to remember that it’s going to be split between a whole bunch of people,
so it ends up being a generally low source of income for professional players.
If you consider how much work a pro needs to put in to reach the final and win a tournament,
only receiving 10-15% of the prize pool is a pretty low sum, so it’s not really a reliable
income source for those planning their careers as pro gamers.
Using Faker as an example, according to estimates by the site eSports Earnings, he’s earned
$1,160,286.36 from 38 different tournaments since he started his career in Season 3.
That’s less than half of his approximate salary for 2017 alone, so any budding professional
players amongst you should definitely be looking to land a good contract rather than expecting
to be rich from tournament winnings!
There are a few other extraneous income sources out there that professional League players
can take advantage of, but in all honesty they are probably insignificant compared to
the other revenue streams.
Riot skins like the World Championship team skins do have a revenue share, and there’s
also stuff like team events or coaching that players can do on the side to earn a bit of
extra income.
Goldenglue commented that although some players do make guides or coach others for that small
income boost, it’s not really a common thing among pro players and it’s usually not a
particularly substantial amount.