The top 20 highest-paid Overwatch esports players in the world
This list indicates the top 20 highest-paid Overwatch players in the world. It considers only earnings from professional esports tournaments.
Initially, several third-party organizers hosted Overwatch tourneys. Considering them and the events held directly by Blizzard, over 12 million dollars in prize money have been awarded in 631 tournaments.
Afterwards, Blizzard established their own esports business with the Overwatch League.
The first season achieved hundreds of thousands of viewers, and the OWL channel has been the 4th most popular Twitch channel in 2018 based on the number of hours watched. Overwatch also won the Esports Game of the Year award.
The Overwatch fans during the Playoffs of OWL Season 1 - Blizzard
Unfortunately (for a portion of the pro scene), Blizzard also updated their tournament license rules, which immensely limited the number of organizations involved in Overwatch. Among the restrictions, we find hard limits to all the revenue sources (including sponsors and broadcasting rights), the prize pools, the sponsors allowed, and the broadcasting time of the games.
These rules led to a drastic reduction of third-party events, but those with the smallest prize money. For this reason, on this list you won’t find players with massive tournament earnings.
The first season of OWL had a total prize pool of 3.5 million dollars, and one million went in the hands of the winners: London Spitfire. The second season features a 5 million dollars prize pool.
London Spitfire holding the trophy of OWL Season 1 - Blizzard
There is only one Overwatch League season yearly, and the earnings from third-party events are quite low, so in about a year the top 20 list will be composed exclusively of OWL players.
The table includes only revenues from esports tournaments because we can’t have precise info on all the money earned by the players via team wages and direct sponsorships.
It is necessary explaining that all the Overwatch League players have a proper salary according to the United States standards, so their actual remuneration doesn’t depend only on tournament winnings as in most esports games.
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| # | Nickname | Name | Country | Earnings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Gesture | Jae-hee Hong | South Korea | $222,730 |
| 2 | Profit | Joon-yeong Park | South Korea | $222,730 |
| 3 | birdring | Ji-hyeok Kim | South Korea | $200,953 |
| 4 | Bdosin | Seung-tae Choi | South Korea | $197,689 |
| 5 | Closer | Won-sik Jung | South Korea | $197,480 |
| 6 | Fury | Jun-ho Kim | South Korea | $190,582 |
| 7 | NUS | Jong-seok Kim | South Korea | $188,479 |
| 8 | Rascal | Dong-jun Kim | South Korea | $181,108 |
| 9 | Nevix | Andreas Karlsson | Sweden | $180,755 |
| 10 | Striker | Nam-joo Kwon | South Korea | $177,424 |
| 11 | smurf | Myeong-hwan Yoo | South Korea | $172,184 |
| 12 | ChoiHyoBin | Hyo-bin Choi | South Korea | $169,657 |
| 13 | moth | Grant Espe | United States | $164,548 |
| 14 | sinatraa | Jay Won | United States | $164,363 |
| 15 | super | Matthew DeLisi | United States | $162,948 |
| 16 | Viol2t | Minki Park | South Korea | $158,901 |
| 17 | Hooreg | Dong-eun Lee | South Korea | $157,907 |
| 18 | Architect | Minho Park | South Korea | $157,289 |
| 19 | Saebyeolbe | Jong-ryeol Park | South Korea | $153,658 |
| 20 | Mek0 | Tae-hong Kim | South Korea | $149,547 |
Data updated to September 8th, 2020
More high-paid esports players:
Statistics: esportsearnings - Header banner and all photos: Blizzard
