Top 9 eSport Players by Prize Winnings Earn $3.1M in 2020
Lower than 2019’s #1 Player
The list of 2020’s top eSports players by total prize winnings took a vastly different shape from the norm.
According to the research data analyzed and published by Safe Betting Sites
, chess Grandmaster Sven Magnus Carlsen was the top eSports earner in 2020. With total winnings of $499,420, he was among the four chess players on the list of the top 50 eSports players.
Based on a report by Unikrn, the earnings of top 50 players in 2020 plummeted by 80%. The figure dropped from $55 million in 2019 to $11 million.
Top 10 Teams in 2020 Made $13.25 Million, $2.58 Million Less than 2019’s Top Team
The classification of chess and other board game under eSports occurred after a Twitch streaming craze in the summer of 2020. Thirty-three-year-old Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura is credited with initiating the craze. He won a total of $289,810 in 2020 and was ranked as the eighth player based on prize winnings.
However, from $240 million in 2019, the 2020 overall eSports prize pool fell to $92 million in 2020. Among the contributing factors was the cancellation of Dota 2’s The International. In 2019, the highest earner globally took home $3.16 million courtesy of that event. Comparatively, the top nine players in 2020 earned a cumulative $3.1 million.
Games like Fortnite also had massive budget cuts during the year. From a prize pool of $71.6 million in 2019, it shed 90% and offered only $7.9 million in 2020. On the other hand, CS:GO was among the top money drivers with a $15.84 million prize pool. 34 of its players took home over $100,000 each.
The highest earning team in 2020 was Dallas Empire, which made $1.80 million. Compared to 2019 rankings, these winnings would have placed the team in the 22nd spot. For comparison, OG was the winning team in 2019, raking in $15.84 million according to Statista. In 2020, the total winnings of the top 10 teams amounted to only $13.25 million. That was $2.58 million less than the 2019 #1 team.
The full story, statistics and information can be found here: https://www.safebettingsites.com/2021/01/20/top-9-esport-players-by-prize-winnings-earn-3-1m-in-2020-lower-than-2019s-1-player/
