EPTTop 16 nations by prize earnings
Sweden: 350,822$
France: 269,905$
Poland: 188,945$
US: 188,655$
Ukraine: 187,130$
Germany: 179,855$
China: 167,319$
Canada: 159,580$
Spain: 102,195$
Taiwan: 98,390$
NL: 89,050$
Russia: 70,410$
Norway: 66,400$
Australia: 65,125$
UK: 51,105$
Finland: 50,990$
Top 16 nations by number of pro players
US: 24
Sweden: 14
Germany: 13
China: 13
Canada: 10
France: 8
Taiwan: 8
Australia: 8
Poland: 6
Ukraine: 6
Russia: 6
UK: 6
Spain: 5
Norway: 4
Finland: 4
NL: 2
Since people ask about Korea, here is a value I calculated for the WoL period a while back.
Total earnings Korea in WoL: $4,761,164 or 65.6% of the total prize pool $7,237,937
Additional calculations by Sjokola
Prize money per million people (per capita * 1.000.000)
Sweden: 36.645
Norway: 13.113
Finland: 9.380
NL: 5.305
Poland: 4.903
Canada: 4.552
Taiwan: 4.216
France: 4.112
Ukraine: 4.110
Australia: 2.828
Germany: 2.193
Spain: 2.172
UK: 809
US: 601
Russia: 491
China: 124
Progamers per hundred million people (per capita * 100.000.000 rounded off)
Sweden: 146
Norway: 79
Finland: 74
Australia: 35
Taiwan: 34
Canada: 29
Germany: 16
Poland: 16
Ukraine: 13
France: 12
NL: 12
Spain: 11
UK: 9
US: 8
Russia: 4
China: 1
Average prize money per progamer per country
NL: 44.525
France: 33.738
Poland: 31.491
Ukraine: 31.188
Sweden: 25.059
Spain: 20.439
Norway: 16.600
Canada: 15.958
Germany: 13.835
China: 12.871
Finland: 12.748
Taiwan: 12.299
Russia: 11.735
UK: 8.518
Australia: 8.141
US: 7.861
Pros and cons with the ranking
So as many might have suspected Sweden came out on top of the score board, followed by France (Stephano & friends), the third place is narrowly taken by Poland with US and Ukraine close behind.
Will there are some issues with this method do I still believe that the it is a reasonable indicator of performance of a country. If you for instance look at the top 5 countries are those countries the ones that are being mentioned 99% of the times when discussing which nations are the best outside of South Korea. This of course is not a coincidence.
So regarding the issues with this method:
The first issue being that the earnings from international competition and earnings from regional tournaments are not separated. Thus if you use prize earning as a measurement of skill can a countries “skill” be boosted by having a large prize pool in regional tournaments. To be able to accommodate for this (to some extent) I sampled the origin of each countries prize earnings. After some quick research I identified four categories of countries:
Low regional PE (0-5%), Medium regional PE (5-15%), High regional PE (15-40%) and Isolated nations.
Low regional PE: Poland, Ukraine, Canada and Netherlands. I don’t know if local tournaments exist, but if they do they are not included in SC2earnings.com and thus neither in this ranking.
Medium regional PE: Sweden, France, Russia, US, Spain, Finland and UK
High regional PE: Germany, Taiwan and Norway
Thus if one would make a list and base it solely on prize earnings from international competition Canada would for instance be above Germany and Norway would not have made the cut into the list (dat oil money!). Most countries would however remain in the same position even with subtracted regional prize money.
Isolated nations: Australia and China
They both above 50% regional earnings but on the other hand are they also isolated from much of the international competition. So prize earnings are not a suitable measurement of skill in their case, as the amount of prize money does not relate well to their international performance.
The second issue revolves around USA. It is for several reasons very hard to determine the skill of SC2 in US. First there is the issue that close to all American organizers has an urge to flood each and every one of their tournaments with 50 top Koreans, usually ending with a slaughter of the NA scene. Meanwhile the US scene has a low interaction towards everything else, making it very hard to determine how they match up against other nations. Then there is the fact that US has a great width of players, more pros than any other nation, but few top caliber players. USA is the only country that has this distribution of skill. The fact is that even if you have 20 decent pros they are not going to earn much money in tournament with 20+ pro Koreans. Therefor US are for instance behind Poland in this list. This is because Nerchio and Mana has earned prize money equal to the amount of the top 23 US players combined. So how do the performance of 2 top caliber players compare to the performance of 20 good players? You tell me.
To conclude are there issues with this measurement and thus is it not suitable to draw conclusions based on minor difference within it. I however think that the larger patterns are correct. I for instance don’t think it is a coincidence that Sweden happens to end on top (let the flaming commence), that Germany is above UK and so forth.
Anyway, if people think this is interesting I could keep updating it. Maybe after every WCS season to see which nations that are climbing the ladder and which that are declining.
