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from 1:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. “That’s just a long grind of playing
against other talented teams,” Schmale explains. After practice
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is another chef-prepared dinner that can include high-end spe-
cialties such as lobster. The goal, says Milanov, is to keep the

players healthy.
The evenings are set aside for relaxation. The players have ac-
cess to vehicles—including Lamborghinis and other luxury cars—
but they rarely use them. “They’ll practice for six, seven, eight
hours a day, just like you and I would go to work,” says Hung
Tran, marketing and content director for the Philadelphia Fusion, a
professional Philadelphia-based team that plays Overwatch. But
after that, most players hang out in the gaming house. “They’re
gamers,” says Tran. “They just want to play games on the side.” 15
Many pro gamers have large, paid followings on YouTube, Twitch,
or Mixer, and they stream their individual play at night. If they miss
a session, they might lose subscribers.

Revenue Streams

Subscribers are important to pro gamers because their salaries
are not extravagant. The average salary for an esports player is
about $50,000 a year. Unlike most workers, however, pro gam-
ers who live in gaming houses do not have to spend any of their
salary for housing, utilities, or food. They also do not pay for travel
and lodging expenses when the team competes in tournaments
that take place out of town. The team takes care of those ex-
penses, too.
In addition, esports team members split tournament winnings
among themselves. For example, when OG won the International
in 2019, the fi ve-member team split the $15,578,510 top prize,
with each player’s share of the prize coming in at $3.1 million.
This was the largest individual payout to a single esports player
in history, and it put all fi ve OG team members at the top of the
esports individual player earnings for 2019. Esports players re-
ceived more than $211 million in prize pool money in 2019.

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