Boards›Esports

Can we be honest here?

TriGunstaR·8/31/2015, 9:14:51 AM·4 votes·1,122 views

Riot is giving their professional players unfair wages, and hording the income for themselves. Lets take a good look at this, with the popularity of League, and to how many are willing to pay for tickets to watch worlds, semi-finals, and spring play offs. The amount professional players make at Riot games, is below the threshold of under $15,000 - $50,000. During Worlds, how ever, probably somewhere $200,000 split for all members.

Esport has risen with annual budget higher than the music industry in 2013 of over $20 million USD. Players in different platform such as DoTa, receive grand prize up to $6 million USD. The justification that Riot games put out is that, "they provide essential needs such as shelter and resident for their career." The amount to rent such a place, probably ends around $12,000.00 per year for one person.

What am I getting at? Basically, Riot is cheating their professional players out of their real income, and hording all of gross for themselves. Literally, they are taking an annual income of probably over $5 million per person who are living in one of their homes, and only giving back a portion of $50,000-$100,000 IF you win WORLDS.

Please don't include personal attribute and personal living conditions as an excuse to why they shouldn't get paid their portion of what they actually earned. Twitch, and other streaming is not part of Riot games, and does not include in their package of how they should be paid. To solely state that players are getting rich off of stream, is none of Riot games business, nor part of their financing.

Why do I care? Well, it's kind of awful to see people get cheated out of what they are actually earning, and hording it for themselves. And if anything, give the professional players at least 1/4 of the portion that they actually earned. Which includes winning Worlds, and all of their revenues. I believe the sum would end up somewhere between $100,000 - $500,000 per person. I mean really, how would any of you like it if the company you work for, refuse to give you what you worked for, and only gave a tenth of your gross? Knowing that you work for $25.00 an hour, for 8 hours, but only getting paid a tenth of that, seems very abusive.

12 Comments

xJLx MCHammer8/31/2015, 1:48:49 PM3 votes

Op You are forgetting any team who sponsors logos. You also forget that players also get paid for streaming on free time

Baziwan8/31/2015, 5:25:21 PM3 votes

From my understanding youve got the players being paid by riot to play in the LCS. They sign a player contract. From what i've read(dont know the accuracy) they get paid roughly $25,000 a year from Riot. You also have each team who then has to provide incentive to play for them(Why should Bjergsen play for TSM and not TL?) we know the players' housing is paid for. From the TSM Legends they mention that they have no expenses to include health care or food(all covered by the team). We can only assume that further to that is teams would want to supplement their players salary (furthering the incentive to play for that team). All this has not even calculated the money from stream rev or sponsorship. (how much would Logitech pay a player or team to have them use their keyboard or headsets when streaming to potentially reach an audience of 67 million players? My guess is quite a bit. Look at other pro athletes contracts with Nike,ect.)

To sum up. Even at 25k a year from riot with 0 expenses after taxes that is still a sizable income that most people would never be able to achieve.

Lstrike8/31/2015, 12:44:18 PM1 votes

I don't know where you got that Riot Games pay rent of these professional players. They don't. They pay $100,000 (I think its 125k now) for each team that plays in the LCS. What they do with that is up to them. That's approximately $15-16k per player (after deducting salary for support staff) for 3 months of play in the LCS. For 2 splits per year, that comes to $30-32k.

Not to mention, they team also gives them a steady salary in addition to room and board for the players. Some players also earn some money by steaming and donations.

According to my calculations, average salary of a professional player playing in LCS is about $40,000/yr. That's what they get in hand minus tax because their stay and food is already taken care of. That is a pretty good deal for 17-22 yr old if you ask me. Of course its not as much as a college football or basketball player earns but it takes time to get there.

And this average salary doesn't count streaming money and prize winnings.

Please correct me if I am wrong

SEKAI8/31/2015, 12:51:36 PM1 votes

Comparing Riot to Valve is like comparing a boss in a somewhat famous company to Bill Gates, it just doesn't work.

Ofc Valve gives out more, because they can.

DoTa

"Defense of The ancient"? DotA - Defense of the Ancient.

Mazariamonti8/31/2015, 5:39:00 PM1 votes

I'm not entirely sure how much professional league players actually DO bring in for Riot though. Their function right now is basically as advertising for the game to help sell LoL, so it's hard to say with specifics how much revenue they are bringing in. I find it hard to imagine that the money Riot gets paid for a couple hundred thousand viewers is anywhere close to justifying $100,000+ to each of these players. I find the lack of paid advertisements in between matches, and that the only thing being advertised during analysis is skins, to be evidence for this. When they break into the TV market (which I feel is not too far away), then I could see their salaries bumping up to reflect what they are earning, because as of right now, it is pretty much up for debate how much exactly they deserve.

Linthe9/1/2015, 3:07:19 PM1 votes

The players don't WORK for Riot? Bjerg works for TSM aka Reginald and DLift works for CLG aka HotshotGG. Blame THEM if you think those guys are getting cheated.

Hint: THEY aren't. The top players have MANY streams (pun NOT intended but still works) of revenue AND their expenses are taken care of (do NOT under-estimate this, especially in a city such as LA.)