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Short Blog;
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today I watched an interview where someone described, to put it bluntly, how shit the life of a pro gamer is. Most teams (outside of EG, and let me just say that EG is really the only exception for a foreign team to earn lots o cash) can't pay more than 500$. I though...WHAT that is insanely GOOD! 500$ a week for playing a game? unreal!
That is until she said that is the pay, per month. That was a weird moment for me. I didn't really know how to react. If i think about it, pros would practice 8 hours a day, 7 days a week (lets just say). 500/4 =125$ a week. Divide by no# hours, and its................
................
..................2 dollar, and twenty three cents..... An hour.
wow
that is just pitiful. And btw, most pros dont even get a salary, they just get a place to live.
So after all of this I just though, why would anyone want to be a pro gamer? Working at your local supermarket would get you at least 5x as much.
The reason I am writing this blog is because I have just tuned into Liquid's new acquisition, Sea, and in front of 2500 people he is dancing with his dog to Gangnam style. He is absolutely hilarious, and although he is serious in front of his newly acquired two and a half thousand fans, and is still funny most of the time in a match, when the going gets tough inside the match I can see him change completely
He is fixated on the game, and gives it 100%. Strategy games are a beautiful thing. We are all here because we love the use of tactics with (almost) equally balanced sides to achieve victory, and right now the best game for that is SC2. It is a wonderful game, and he is doing what he loves. So for the 500$ a month or whatever Liquid is paying him, I can see that he, and many other streamers, are always smiling. It is because there is more important things than money in life. Most would get turned off from the profession because of the money factor alone, but these people gain genuine happiness and fulfillment from their job.
Maybe the bling bling in esports will increase one day, or maybe it will remain this horrid forever. But I am proud to be amongst these names on the right hand side of my screen, because they are doing something they love and fulfilling their dreams infront of hundreds or even thousands of people, which is an experience of a lifetime
 
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Liquid is a top team, and there sponsors are very good and are placed well- Sea is popular, and at the same time very strong. I'm sure he has a decent salary ^^- of course, esports is still growing. Things will almost definitely only going to get better, and the people that live in those conditions deserve but more respect from us. I can say that anyone that has the skill and balls to go into esports is someone I would like to share coffee with.
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On October 05 2012 10:44 SickeL wrote:
Liquid is a top team, and there sponsors are very good and are placed well- Sea is popular, and at the same time very strong. I'm sure he has a decent salary ^^- of course, esports is still growing. Things will almost definitely only going to get better, and the people that live in those conditions deserve but more respect from us. I can say that anyone that has the skill and balls to go into esports is someone I would like to share coffee with.
I hope it grows as much as you hope, but I remain pessimistic. The amount of people playing vs the $$ in the scene is nowhere near balanced, and 90% of pro gamers will still leave their profession with little money and work experience, so it is a tough gig. And you are right, you need a lot of skills + balls
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Not pretending to be an expert on this subject, but I heard Huk's salary used to be in 6 figures from streaming. Just Saying....
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On October 05 2012 11:02 isaachukfan wrote:
Not pretending to be an expert on this subject, but I heard Huk's salary used to be in 6 figures from streaming. Just Saying....
Esports is VERY very top heavy. Like from #1 to #10 you can see a dropoff of 10x even (or at least it was I do not claim to know current numbers).
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On October 05 2012 11:02 isaachukfan wrote:
Not pretending to be an expert on this subject, but I heard Huk's salary used to be in 6 figures from streaming. Just Saying....
And yet no one has any idea where that came from.
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On October 05 2012 11:13 mizU wrote:Show nested quote +On October 05 2012 11:02 isaachukfan wrote:
Not pretending to be an expert on this subject, but I heard Huk's salary used to be in 6 figures from streaming. Just Saying.... And yet no one has any idea where that came from.
There was that guy that reported that MC's salary was 10% of HuK's (which HuK himself later refuted), so people just assumed HuK was making a ton of money.
The guy I'm referring to btw is the same guy who breaks the team news before word leaks out to the foreign scene. (So far, he has gotten Zenio --> Liquid, MC --> SK, Stephano --> EG, and Sea --> Liquid, and some of the KR teams folding.) I don't think he's really an insider source myself -- I think the theories floating around is that he works for one of the KR eSports sites or that he just reads the comments and posts speculation -- but he's the most "official" source of the rumor I can even come up with.
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
Well, Sea was earning something like $80k/year at MBC back in the day :O
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It's definitely not the most lucrative career out there unless you you reach the very top, even in Brood War after the top 30 or so players they did not make that much. ( salary rumors, not confirmed )
If Starcraft 2 can continue to grow its audience hopefully some day players will be making a comfortable living without being Mvp or MC.
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The number you get is for the non-top players. Top teams still get a very very significant amount of money, but yeah as mentioned...there is a huge drop-off. It's not to surprising really, considering the nature of esports.
In sports such as tennis, too, it's downright terrible if you're not a top player. [incoming run-on sentence] Every year you're traveling almost nonstop around the world, you're living from motel to motel, there's like a 1.5-month offseason, it's hard to keep a girlfriend because you'll be traveling a ton and if you're not a great player, well, you're looking at very little money made. And tennis as a sport is extremely difficult since it's 1v1 just you and the other guy on the court, lose in a tournament and you pack your bags for the next one etc. And even the top player makes far less money than an American basketball/football player or a European footballer--for those sports, even the bench players make much more than even many top 10 tennis players, maybe about even if you consider sponsorships.
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On October 05 2012 11:23 babylon wrote:Show nested quote +On October 05 2012 11:13 mizU wrote:On October 05 2012 11:02 isaachukfan wrote:
Not pretending to be an expert on this subject, but I heard Huk's salary used to be in 6 figures from streaming. Just Saying.... And yet no one has any idea where that came from. There was that guy that reported that MC's salary was 10% of HuK's (which HuK himself later refuted), so people just assumed HuK was making a ton of money. The guy I'm referring to btw is the same guy who breaks the team news before word leaks out to the foreign scene. (So far, he has gotten Zenio --> Liquid, MC --> SK, Stephano --> EG, and Sea --> Liquid, and some of the KR teams folding.) I don't think he's really an insider source myself -- I think the theories floating around is that he works for one of the KR eSports sites or that he just reads the comments and posts speculation -- but he's the most "official" source of the rumor I can even come up with.
Who????
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On October 05 2012 11:32 thedeadhaji wrote:
Well, Sea was earning something like $80k/year at MBC back in the day :O
Yeah I don't think salary was the real clincher for Sea. I think he was just looking for something new and to get into the foreign scene and travel. Good for him.
On the other hand salaries are the entire revenue of a pro player. A lot of them will get extra incentivized bonuses, based on play, streaming, and other sponsorship related channels. For top streamers ad revenue goes a long way to supplement their salary. On top of that you see travel expenses and other bonuses, like gear. Salary is usually a very small portion of the support players receive.
If you had to break each portion down monetarily the pay would be a lot higher than the actually contractual salary.
-salary
-bonuses
-prize purses
-streaming revenue
-sponsorship bonuses (I doubt this exist than for other than a few other players)
-travel expenses possibly including food
-Computer equipment and peripherals
The peripherals are usually perks of a specific sponsor, but it still saves the player the cost of buying them.
I think it's a little more comfortable than you would think of it.
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On October 05 2012 12:12 mizU wrote:Show nested quote +On October 05 2012 11:23 babylon wrote:On October 05 2012 11:13 mizU wrote:On October 05 2012 11:02 isaachukfan wrote:
Not pretending to be an expert on this subject, but I heard Huk's salary used to be in 6 figures from streaming. Just Saying.... And yet no one has any idea where that came from. There was that guy that reported that MC's salary was 10% of HuK's (which HuK himself later refuted), so people just assumed HuK was making a ton of money. The guy I'm referring to btw is the same guy who breaks the team news before word leaks out to the foreign scene. (So far, he has gotten Zenio --> Liquid, MC --> SK, Stephano --> EG, and Sea --> Liquid, and some of the KR teams folding.) I don't think he's really an insider source myself -- I think the theories floating around is that he works for one of the KR eSports sites or that he just reads the comments and posts speculation -- but he's the most "official" source of the rumor I can even come up with. Who????
http://www.reddit.com/user/starcraft2news
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I think streaming is the main source of income for pros so watch the ads lol....thats the moral of the story.
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According to your math, even if it was $500/week that's still < $9/hr. That's... "insanely good"? Sorry, no thanks.
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only the very best foreign players make over 60k/year. if you like money progaming really isn't your field. Even the best players at the top put in so much time and travel so much it isn't an easy life at all.
edit: just to clarify I was speaking based off salary and what a team would actually give in compensation. If you want to stream 12hours a day sure you can make quite a lot of money assuming you have a good amount of viewers consistently.
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At least most pro gamers don't have to pay rent which accounts for most of the expenses anyways...
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United Kingdom16710 Posts
I would love to see a general rise in the basic salary of progamers, but that simply cannot happen without the money flowing in from sponsors. Though the status quo might seem bad, there is a plus side to this; it gives extra motivation for players to achieve success and earn the big bucks. It drives them to practice harder, longer, and smarter to get to the top. I think that's good for the game and the scene.
I would also like to add that doing so, and receiving a sizable salary might actually do more harm than good, in its current form. Of course it varies from person to person, but it can sap the motivation and the fear that drives you on out of you. You might point to the top earners in the (now defunct) BW scene and say bullshit, but those teams run a very tight and disciplined ship. The players that earn the most are almost always the ones that practice the hardest. The environment ensures that you have to get to the top and stay there in order to keep receiving large wages. I don't know how teams like EG operate, but perhaps they need to look at how better to incentivise their players by making wage more dependent on performance.
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On October 05 2012 12:53 Grobyc wrote:
According to your math, even if it was $500/week that's still < $9/hr. That's... "insanely good"? Sorry, no thanks.
yes that's 'Insanely Good' for playing a video game
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On October 05 2012 13:41 firehand101 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 05 2012 12:53 Grobyc wrote:
According to your math, even if it was $500/week that's still < $9/hr. That's... "insanely good"? Sorry, no thanks. yes that's 'Insanely Good' for playing a video game
Yet relatively terrible for a full-time job.
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For not having to pay for food, rent, and other expenses, even 500 dollars isn't 'terrible' at all. Yes, you cannot live a posh lifestyle or anything, but by no means should you be short of money. If all you are concerned about is how your bank account will look like after a year, then you should not be a progamer anyway.
plus, if you are a respected player, you will get quite a bit of money from streaming and other small tournaments, and occasional increase from a larger tournament. In reality, that 500 dollars a month is probably closer to 800-1000 dollars a month for many at least, and like I said, if you have no expenses, a bit under 1000 bucks is something I would consider quite good. For a 'star' it's not that good yes, but not bad at all.
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On October 05 2012 16:43 Ahzz wrote:
For not having to pay for food, rent, and other expenses, even 500 dollars isn't 'terrible' at all. Yes, you cannot live a posh lifestyle or anything, but by no means should you be short of money. If all you are concerned about is how your bank account will look like after a year, then you should not be a progamer anyway.
plus, if you are a respected player, you will get quite a bit of money from streaming and other small tournaments, and occasional increase from a larger tournament. In reality, that 500 dollars a month is probably closer to 800-1000 dollars a month for many at least, and like I said, if you have no expenses, a bit under 1000 bucks is something I would consider quite good. For a 'star' it's not that good yes, but not bad at all.
for many there is no salary at all. For an ex-slayers player the best they could do was $500, so I don't know where you are checking your facts...
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On October 05 2012 17:44 firehand101 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 05 2012 16:43 Ahzz wrote:
For not having to pay for food, rent, and other expenses, even 500 dollars isn't 'terrible' at all. Yes, you cannot live a posh lifestyle or anything, but by no means should you be short of money. If all you are concerned about is how your bank account will look like after a year, then you should not be a progamer anyway.
plus, if you are a respected player, you will get quite a bit of money from streaming and other small tournaments, and occasional increase from a larger tournament. In reality, that 500 dollars a month is probably closer to 800-1000 dollars a month for many at least, and like I said, if you have no expenses, a bit under 1000 bucks is something I would consider quite good. For a 'star' it's not that good yes, but not bad at all. for many there is no salary at all. For an ex-slayers player the best they could do was $500, so I don't know where you are checking your facts...
If that is the case then I will say that it's their choice I suppose. Personally I wouldn't do it because I don't think it'd be worth it, but if someone decides to take a risk/live a dream for a year or two, then go for it. It's up to them.
Nothing we can do about it really, aside from hope that the popularity of the game grows enough for more teams than EG to be able to support their players
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well considering you didn't take into account that players on teams in team houses pay no bills, depending on where you live and your living conditions thats an extra 1000-2000$ per month.
Edit* If you don't make a decent salary, or can't win a tournament/place highly in tournaments for your first year as a pro gamer, you most likely never will, and there is no reason to continue monetary wise. But I have a feeling a lot of them do it for reasons other than money.
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Flash was making 300k right?
Anyway, you gotta take into account that the top players will win tournaments, events, and prizes even if they're not placed very first. Not to mention they can collect $ from streaming. If I KNEW I had the skills to be within top 10 players, I would pursue the career. Otherwise, I would never do it. Too risky for me.
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On October 05 2012 14:18 Dfgj wrote:Show nested quote +On October 05 2012 13:41 firehand101 wrote:On October 05 2012 12:53 Grobyc wrote:
According to your math, even if it was $500/week that's still < $9/hr. That's... "insanely good"? Sorry, no thanks. yes that's 'Insanely Good' for playing a video game Yet relatively terrible for a full-time job.
Exactly. I mean I love StarCraft and all, but you could just be making so much more doing something else that is more stable and requires a lot less time. As well as you could pretty easily argue that you would enjoy the game more as a hobby since your life doesn't revolve around it in terms of work.
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Saying that "somebody said that they make only 500$ per month" is just useless, unless you can provide SERIOUS sources.
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On October 05 2012 23:12 Sakray wrote:
Saying that "somebody said that they make only 500$ per month" is just useless, unless you can provide SERIOUS sources.
It's the first fricken link that I posted, maybe you should check that out...
On October 05 2012 21:31 GhostOwl wrote:
Flash was making 300k right?
Anyway, you gotta take into account that the top players will win tournaments, events, and prizes even if they're not placed very first. Not to mention they can collect $ from streaming. If I KNEW I had the skills to be within top 10 players, I would pursue the career. Otherwise, I would never do it. Too risky for me.
Dude he is in the top echelons of gaming, the top 0.01%. The majority of gamers go through what I told you
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I saw it, and in my opinion a relatively unknown team isn't a good source when talking about salary :/
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On October 05 2012 13:41 firehand101 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 05 2012 12:53 Grobyc wrote:
According to your math, even if it was $500/week that's still < $9/hr. That's... "insanely good"? Sorry, no thanks. yes that's 'Insanely Good' for playing a video game
At that point you're no longer "playing" a video game. Also, given that it's not a stable position, I don't see how it's in any way good.
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I know i watched an interview with Nightend ( was done in Romanian and long time ago, but might be able to find it ), it was made about 2 years ago, he said something around 1k per month and he also mentioned that he knows player that are generally over 1k.
She might be talking about the korean scene only, where the guys are pretty much 16 to 20 thus probably living with parents and maybe having a bit of fun/storing some money b4 college. Or about the NA scene, where considering the utter lack of tournament winning players outside EG and Illusion id see it as a possible thing.
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I know some people who have a salary around 1k € and isn't a EG Member.
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Calgary25977 Posts
On October 05 2012 22:02 Grobyc wrote:Show nested quote +On October 05 2012 14:18 Dfgj wrote:On October 05 2012 13:41 firehand101 wrote:On October 05 2012 12:53 Grobyc wrote:
According to your math, even if it was $500/week that's still < $9/hr. That's... "insanely good"? Sorry, no thanks. yes that's 'Insanely Good' for playing a video game Yet relatively terrible for a full-time job. Exactly. I mean I love StarCraft and all, but you could just be making so much more doing something else that is more stable and requires a lot less time. As well as you could pretty easily argue that you would enjoy the game more as a hobby since your life doesn't revolve around it in terms of work.
If you're in Starcraft to get paid you're a dummy and won't get paid. It's a gamble. Look at the big names (Idra, Day[9], Artosis, Tasteless) that are making significant money. Now look 3 years ago when they were making nothing and three of the four were grinding it out just to get by.
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There are very few people making salaries worthy of note within e-sports. There, I said it. I'd say in the Western scene (this includes Europe), Evil Geniuses is the only team with multiple players making salaries which could be considered lucrative or established right now. But this should be very expected.
Before the launch of StarCraft II and platforms like live streaming, e-sports wasn't really going anywhere in the Western world. The Counter-Strike scene had been dead since about 2006-2007, game developers were consistently reminding the PC gamers that the PC platform was too niche to build games for anymore, and there were no existent competitive titles sparking regular interest in anything which could be considered mainstream media. The tournament scene was also sparse as the rise and fall of event organizers was becoming a common occurrence.
Before StarCraft II (and the near perfect timing of live streaming's introduction to gamers), e-sports was by all accounts down and out. You would've been either a prophet or an idiot to expect PC gaming to pick up "steam" as rapidly as we saw with the introduction of StarCraft II even when you considered the game's predecessor's success. Sequels to popular PC franchises had come out so many times before and flopped that I don't think anyone thought two years before SC2 was released, "Oh man...the e-sports world will change once this game comes out." It wasn't until closer to the game's launch (i.e. the beta period which reinforced it) that we began to really recognize the potential of the game.
So, with that said, the expectation that suddenly pro gamers should be making tons of money is both naive and simply illogical. Our history doesn't show any reason for a sudden explosion in salaries or profits that pro gamers should be making (even with the existence of live streaming now) at this time. If anything, it should reinforce the fact that those who are making a lot of money quickly right now are of such a small fraction and that it's to be expected given our gradual rise to this time period.
Now, what's even scarier (or should be), and it's a topic which I have to both tread lightly upon and note that it hasn't been mentioned often, is that there are few team managers who know what they're doing. Point blank. I've seen this with the questionable player acquisitions, the lackluster attempts at creating promotions and content around teams, and the repeatedly failed attempts that come in between normal proper decision making as it relates to marketing, press, and the like. As much as I want to point my finger at the scene and then throw my hands up in frustration, I find myself pointing more blame at the failed teams and brands which come out of the woodwork than at the fact that right now people aren't making all that much money (or at least, not that many are).
One of the greatest and worst things about e-sports is that anyone can be a part of it. Anyone today can say, "I want to create a team," or "I want to create X" and then they can do so. That is an attractive thing about this industry because of its sheer freedom. Unfortunately, the damage that is caused and has been caused by people who have said those same phrases is immense. We at EG have to fight through that regularly as we approach clients who have said, "Oh...I sponsored X team once and it failed," or "I worked with them before, they didn't know how to X". These are frustrations we encounter regularly and they are spawned from the very people who know not what they're doing.
Ultimately, the topic of salaries is of little interest to me, personally, but I do hope my commentary has helped others understand what we should really be focusing on. Salaries will grow as e-sports grows. Stop worrying about them and worry about the building blocks which are responsible for creating them: teams and players. This is like...a very, very brief way of talking about some major topics, and this blog kind of reminded me about them again, but it should give you an idea of some other perspectives going into a topic like this.
If no one reads it, oh well...I enjoyed writing it 
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There's just not enough money in the scene for players to make more. There's plenty of other jobs that would pay better than sc. The amount of skill involved to even make anything is enormous. I don't think anyone mentioned taxes yet either. That being said, if I could make $500 a month pretax and have most of my expenses paid for I'd jump on that in a heartbeat because I love the game. I would need to have a second job, but that wouldn't be a problem.
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On October 06 2012 03:04 EG.lectR wrote:There are very few people making salaries worthy of note within e-sports. There, I said it. I'd say in the Western scene (this includes Europe), Evil Geniuses is the only team with multiple players making salaries which could be considered lucrative or established right now. But this should be very expected. Before the launch of StarCraft II and platforms like live streaming, e-sports wasn't really going anywhere in the Western world. The Counter-Strike scene had been dead since about 2006-2007, game developers were consistently reminding the PC gamers that the PC platform was too niche to build games for anymore, and there were no existent competitive titles sparking regular interest in anything which could be considered mainstream media. The tournament scene was also sparse as the rise and fall of event organizers was becoming a common occurrence. Before StarCraft II (and the near perfect timing of live streaming's introduction to gamers), e-sports was by all accounts down and out. You would've been either a prophet or an idiot to expect PC gaming to pick up "steam" as rapidly as we saw with the introduction of StarCraft II even when you considered the game's predecessor's success. Sequels to popular PC franchises had come out so many times before and flopped that I don't think anyone thought two years before SC2 was released, "Oh man...the e-sports world will change once this game comes out." It wasn't until closer to the game's launch (i.e. the beta period which reinforced it) that we began to really recognize the potential of the game. So, with that said, the expectation that suddenly pro gamers should be making tons of money is both naive and simply illogical. Our history doesn't show any reason for a sudden explosion in salaries or profits that pro gamers should be making (even with the existence of live streaming now) at this time. If anything, it should reinforce the fact that those who are making a lot of money quickly right now are of such a small fraction and that it's to be expected given our gradual rise to this time period. Now, what's even scarier (or should be), and it's a topic which I have to both tread lightly upon and note that it hasn't been mentioned often, is that there are few team managers who know what they're doing. Point blank. I've seen this with the questionable player acquisitions, the lackluster attempts at creating promotions and content around teams, and the repeatedly failed attempts that come in between normal proper decision making as it relates to marketing, press, and the like. As much as I want to point my finger at the scene and then throw my hands up in frustration, I find myself pointing more blame at the failed teams and brands which come out of the woodwork than at the fact that right now people aren't making all that much money (or at least, not that many are). One of the greatest and worst things about e-sports is that anyone can be a part of it. Anyone today can say, "I want to create a team," or "I want to create X" and then they can do so. That is an attractive thing about this industry because of its sheer freedom. Unfortunately, the damage that is caused and has been caused by people who have said those same phrases is immense. We at EG have to fight through that regularly as we approach clients who have said, "Oh...I sponsored X team once and it failed," or "I worked with them before, they didn't know how to X". These are frustrations we encounter regularly and they are spawned from the very people who know not what they're doing. Ultimately, the topic of salaries is of little interest to me, personally, but I do hope my commentary has helped others understand what we should really be focusing on. Salaries will grow as e-sports grows. Stop worrying about them and worry about the building blocks which are responsible for creating them: teams and players. This is like...a very, very brief way of talking about some major topics, and this blog kind of reminded me about them again, but it should give you an idea of some other perspectives going into a topic like this. If no one reads it, oh well...I enjoyed writing it
thanks for the read
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EPT
