Football vs Esports: How much do professional players earn

Most People are well aware that football has the greatest earning potential owing to its wide popularity. And recently, the drastic expansion of esports has raised questions if professional players can earn as much as regular athletes, especially in football.

Despite hailing from different domains, both have qualified certificates, possess unparalleled talent, and brave competition. But the difference in the economical scope of these spheres is vast. Each year with new innovations like esports live score portals the esports engage more and more viewers allowing over a million to track their teams and players.

Although with each year gaming sports and its players are closing the gap in monetization and popularity. In comparison to football, esports are still nascent, new industry with a rough monetization mechanism that is still being developed.

Overview

Professional Football Players: Football is hands down the most watched game globally and is followed by a whopping 4 billion people and is a multi billion dollar business selling broadcasting rights, sponsorships and of course merchandising. At the top of the sport are players like Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Kylian Mbappé who rake millions of dollars each year in their spheres courtesy of million dollar contracts, performance based incentives and advertisement placements.

• Tier 1 Level: This is applicable to those who participate in the French Ligue 1 and also English Premier League. Endorsements bring their annual income to over 10 million. There are even a few endorsements that help them cross an annual gross of 100 million.
• Tier 2 level: For players who do not go up to uber-star status but play at the silver league, they make around 500 thousand to 5 million dollars a year.
• Tier 3 level: We can paybetween 50,000 - 200,000 annually to rookies and those who play for the lower leagues. However, the price tag predominantly depends on the region and the club capacity. There are top players that do not rely on their league provisions but their endorsements which carry a mouth-dropping range of 10 million to 100 million.

Here is the average annual salary of a football player from around the globe:

• English Premier League (EPL) - A football player from the league earns an annual salary between 3.5 million to 4 million euros.
• Ligue 1 (France) - At an average they are paid 2.5 million euros
• La Liga (Spain) - The winning footballers here earn up to 2.2 million euros

Kylian Mbappe: Rivalling himself up against the big shots in the industry with an annual income of 72 million euros (over 6 million a month) he is many leagues ahead of the average.

Esports Players: Now esports has to put within this category, even though it’s a newer industry its multiplayer and streaming tournaments are ready for an era of takeover. Games such as Dota 2, League of legends and Counter-Strike 2 do possess players that earn millions from just a few games.

• Top-tier e-sports players like LoL and Dota 2 can earn up to $2 million every year including sponsorship and streaming. This trend can also be seen with players of the International who make an average of $500,000 annually.
• If you play less popular games or are from a less well off region, expect to earn anywhere between $50,000 and $300,000.
• If you are starting up as an e-sports player, expect to earn between $10,000 and $50,000 a year as your income will mainly depend on stream revenue and small prize money.

Every video game has a set monthly salary that its professional players earn for example:

• In League of Legends, the average salary is approximately $33,000.
• In Counter Strike 2, players receive around $25,000 on average.
• For Dota 2, expect to earn on average $10,000.

Prize Money and Tournament Earnings

Football: It is clear that e-sport tournaments are dependent on the prize funds unlike a football player who receives bonuses while the team share the burden of chasing the prize money. A team that wins the champions league, no matter which part of the UCL League they belong to can make as much as $100 million.

Esports: E-sport players on the other hand, have more of a dependency on the prize funds. Team Spirit scooped over 18 million dollars of the record 40 million dollars prize money pool for the International of Dota in 2021 which beat the previous record for the highest prize money ever. Earning millions each is incomparable to the figures most traditional sports players earn.

Sponsorship & Endorsement Deals

Football: Football is fun as well as a lucrative game as players get ample opportunity to enter good advertising contracts. Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi also have the agreements with brands such as Nike, Adidas, Coca-Cola and many others which give them a chance to earn tens of millions every year because of such deals. For example, Ronaldo earns more than 50 millions dollars in a year from endorsements and sponsorships combined.

Esports: Similar to how footballer… Firstly Esports athletes are provided sponsorships just not on the same level as primary sport. Brands like Red Bull, Logitech and HyperX sponsor players and teams especially around big events. Sponsorships can amount to a couple of millions a year for the most active players/streamers but still can not be compared to football.

Streaming and Content Creation

Football: Football players generally only do this at times so it cannot be classified as a core earning avenue. Their exposure has a greater relevance to match TV coverage and the media.

Esports: Twitch and Youtube are incredibly lucrative for gamers as supporters, subscriptions, and advertisements pay them well for their services. Every popular streamer is a millionaire and every esporter is a rich individual. If you take Tyler “Ninja” Blevins into account, you’ll see how it’s pretty reasonable to assume that Ninja makes millions solely off of these platforms, excluding payment received from tournaments.

Regional Differences

Football: It’s always been known that European leagues pay higher than their counterparts since western European markets have significant investment compared to other countries such as Africa and Asia, who pay their footballers much lower wages.

Esports: The trends are just like Football with Western players enjoying higher esport player salary due to higher sponsorship deals while South Americans and Southeast Asian players make considerably less even when they have a strong competitive presence.

Career Longevity

Football: If you want to talk about career spans, footballers have the shortest competitive lifespan. While the average age of a career peak hovers around 25 to 30 the timeline only shrinks in the wake of injuries or a decrease in form. In this stead however, the majority of players turn to coaching, analysis or even business ventures which allows them to stay in the competitive sphere of football.

Esports: An esports career is even more stable. It has not been unusual for players to reach their peak in their teenage years or in early twenties. Limiting schedules as well as rapid evolution of the game meta becomes a daunting task, Constant substitution is absolutely essential A number of players who retire from competing actively turn into streaming, coaching or content creation in order to supplement their revenue.

Contrasts Between the Lower and Upper Leagues

Football: The gap that racks up between a premier player and someone who plays in lower leagues, is pretty evident. For while superstars sweat out in front of million dollar contracts, players in lower divisions are in some cases unable to even show off their income and are sometimes required to do bed side jobs.

Esports: Even greater disparity is present when compared to the esports genre. Only a small dividend of players makes up most of the paychecks through dominating tournaments or sponsorship, while a quite a number of other professionals only net small competitive sums or work secondary jobs whenever they can.

Although both professional football players and esports athletes are able to reach a level of income that would be able to satisfy them beyond their imagination, the structure and metrics of these earnings are oceans apart. The popularity of football, especially global one, guarantees the elite athletes of the sport a broad and stable source of earnings, especially through sponsorship agreements as well as league systems.

Esports on the other hand, even if it’s growing, is still struggling with profiting off sponsorship deals and prize funds with only a small percentage of players being able to achieve millionaire statuses. There is also huge disparity when it comes to the number of clubs and even chances of making it to the top league which esports is still behind in comparison to football.