Faker’s Total Prize Earnings Just Hit 1 Million Dollars USD, And That’s Insanely Low
LoL needs to take better care of its stars
Do you know who Faker is? His Korean name is Lee Sang-heok and he is considered the absolute best League of Legends player in the world, adored by fans worldwide as a living god.
Recently, Faker crossed the 1 million dollar mark for total prize earnings. This is money that Faker has won from playing and winning tournaments, and is a cumulative total. And while that might sound amazing — 1 million dollars for playing a video game! — that total actually seems absurdly low when considering:
- Viewership: The 2016 League of Legends World Cup attracted more viewers than the Warriors vs Cavaliers 2016 NBA Finals.
- Revenue: League of Legends is reported to have earned $1.6 billion (!) in 2016.
- Player base: Not surprisingly, the League of Legends player base is estimated to be 100 million unique players per month
Given the above data, shouldn’t League of Legends players be earning more from their tournaments? Granted, these players do receive salaries: Faker’s salary is purported to be 2.5 million USD, and these stars do earn scores of thousands of dollars from streaming and sponsorships. But salaries are paid by teams and stream revenue comes from Twitch. Why isn’t LoL paying more money to its players?
Take a look at this list of top earning e-sports players, (tournament prize pool only):
There is only one LoL player on this list, who happens to be the undisputed best player in the world. The rest of the players here are Dota 2 players, and the number one player on the list, Universe, isn’t even considered to be the best at his respective game. (Note: Universe is an awesome, awesome player).
The moral of this story is that LoL needs to step up its game and take better care of its esports stars. They could learn a lot from Valve and Dota 2: despite the fact that Dota 2 “only” made $260 million last year (almost a tenth of LoL’s revenue), they have somehow found the way to sponsor multi-million dollars tournaments on a consistent basis, mostly through the masterful usage of crowdfunding and maybe even some economic wizardry. Faker would certainly appreciate it.
