So, I have a dirty little secret to reveal that anyone “in the industry” would hate 🤪to hear if it were to ever get out:
eSports isn’t profitable.
Oh sure, a few notable athletes and teams can , but those are the exceptions and not the rule. Every league and almost every team needs a s𝓰ugar daddy to stay afloat, and as soon as those investors notice that they’re not making a return, it all collapses like a house of cards.
Don't believe me? Let's take a look at League of Legends. Ostensibly the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:biggest eSports league on the planet with millions of players and even more millions in prize money to be won, Riot Games doesn't make a single cent off their professional eSports division. In fact, Riot has invested "" $100 million into making League of Legends the biggest eSports league in the world, and th🧜ey've yet to see a return on investment.
What about second place, Dota 2? Also not profitable. The International might have the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:biggest prize pool in the world, but Valve crowdfunds 𝔉that prize pool with in-game sales and matches what players pay from 🔯their own pocket to further inflate the final number. Winners take home a huge windfall, but those are the precious few.
A found that the top 5 players in the world take home the lion's share of all available cash prizes in Dota 2. The top 50 players make mo🌸re than all remaining players combined. And of the teams that took part in The International 2015, 72% of them broke up after they failed to place.
Imagineꦛ if 72% of major league baseball teams disbanded if they didn't win the World Series, ✅or if the top 50 players made more money than every other player.
But maybe we shouldn’t be so surprised: income inequality in the United States is the highest it's ever been. According to a recent report from , the top 10% have more wealth than the rest of the country. The top 1% have fu🅘lly one-third of all wealth in the US. And the bottom 50%? The majority of Americans? They h🌼ave less than 2%. If anything, eSports is just mirroring the world we live in.
So why hasn't eSports totally collapsed then? Well, you could argue that some of it already has. Blizzard largely 168澳洲幸运5开🎃奖网:shut down its eSports division in 2018, taking everyone by surprise. The Overwatch League, perhaps the most interesting and successful of the Blizzard eSports leagues, has seen high-profile departures of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:many of their key casting talent, leading many to speculate if they might be the next t🌄o fall.
The problem wasn’t that Blizzard didn’t have a thriving eSports scene - they did. The problem was that it just wasn’t making them any money. Even their most famous game is on a razor-thin margin and Activision seems ready to pull the plug if they can’t turn the Overwatch League into a money maker.
Despite all these high-profile warning signs, millionaires and billionaires , desperate to be on the ground floor when it ✤finally does take off. The only problem is that throwing this much money around is inherently . Everyone is so desperate to be on the ground floor when things finally do start making money that they don’t realize it’s a long-game. Profitability takes time, and every time someone pulls the plug on a team, a league, or anything else, it keeps setting eSports back as a whole.
Every time it ♋looks like eSports might finally arrive, the finish line keeps getting moved back. At this rate, I’m not sure if eSports will ever truly make it.