Who said playing games was a waste of time?

When you think of high-paid, professional sports stars, your mind will probably go to athletes such as Usain Bolt, Lionel Messi or LeBron James—multi-millionaire athletes who, at the top of their game, took home more money per month than most of us could hope to see in a lifetime.

One area of professional sports you may not think to add to the list is Esports—but based on what the top earners took home in 2019, it may open a lot of eyes to the mammoth amounts of money available for pro-gamers.

Last year, Dota 2 players JerAx, Ceb and Topson, each took home an eye-watering $3.17 million (£2.35m). Whilst it’s not in the same stratosphere as pro-athletes earnings, it is the same as professional footballer Wayne Rooney’s 2019 salary, and definitely shows that Esports is a fast-growing and highly competitive industry.

To put it into perspective, the top three Esports earners of 2019 each took home the equivalent of the average U.S. salary in less than six days. For some lower paid jobs, such as a cashier or food prep worker, it’s halved to just three days. Imagine earning the equivalent of somebody’s salary over the course of a weekend.

the top 10 FIFA 20 earners, they made an ACCumulative $456,000

It’s no surprise that PC dominates the Esports market, but what may come as a shock is that, out of the top 100 Esports earners in 2019, just three games make up 93% of the Esports earners, with Counter-Strike: Global Offensive joining Dota 2 and Fortnite being the games with the biggest prize pools.

The remaining 7% of games include Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, League of Legends and Shadowverse. Shockingly, FIFA doesn’t even make an appearance anywhere in the top 100; geek site FandomSpot put together a list of 2019’s top earners, and found that the top ten highest earners last year made a collective $25,000,000. If you compare this to the top 10 FIFA 20 earners, they made an accumulative $456,000. Not exactly pocket change, but still comparatively small.

The countries leading the way in the top 100 Esports earners are China with a whopping 27 players, but none of them back an appearance in the top 25. Second is the USA (14 players), followed by Denmark (9 players), Canada (5 players) and joint fifth are Russia and Brazil (4 players). Sadly, just one gamer from the UK makes an appearance in the top 100, but if it’s any consolation, Brits tend to fare well at FIFA.

Thanks to the pandemic, and tournaments being cancelled, 2020’s highest earners list may take a hit, so it won’t be a true reflection on how the industry is growing. From 2021 it will be interesting to see, with Esports gaining popularity by the day, just how big the prize pools grow. Will PC continue to dominate, or will console gamers get their chance to earn such monumental figures?

The one thing we are sure about, however, is that we are definitely making a career change in 2021.