Esports are going through a financial cold front, especially in North America. With budget cuts looming, plenty of esports organizations are downsizing, cutting benefits or signing “cheaper” rosters to their teams.

All of the recent news about financial woes have reignited the debate on esports player salaries and how much organizations should allocate for them.

The good old days when all your earnings were written on a BIG cheque for everyone to see.

The Industry’s Perspective

The question of salary transparency is quite persistent in esports. The esports community has long been in the dark about player contracts, a stark contrast to traditional sports where salary information is public.

During Henry ‘HenryG’ Greer’s time as General Manager of Cloud9, the organization tried to bring transparency to their CS:GO roster’s salaries. However, the salary figures and players were somewhat bullied about their price tags during that time and the initiative was eventually abandoned.

Alex Gonzalez, the head of Luminosity, suggested early in January that the conversation about player salaries is simpler than it appears. He advocates for a reduction in player salaries in proportion to the team’s revenue.

“A lot of talks throughout the community about whether an “esports team” can be profitable in 2023, the answer is yes, 100%. What will not be profitable is the *traditional* esports team format that we have seen for the last 10 years.”

Shahzeb “ShahZaM” Khan also shared his views on salary transparency in a reply to Jake Lucky last month. He believes that players are already quite candid among themselves about their pay rates. However, ShahZaM warns that making this information public could backfire. He argues that unlike traditional sports, which have salary caps, esports involves young individuals with less job security.

In mainstream sports in the U.S., salary caps and player unions dictate player salaries and team budgets. But in esports, the landscape is different. ShahZaM points out that making salary information public could lead to fans weaponizing it against players.

Where does leave us, and which route is best for the ecosystem?

Would esports athletes face even harsher scrutiny and criticism from fans if their salaries were made public? It’s a question worth pondering as the industry grapples with the issue of salary transparency.

Athlete contracts in traditional sports lead to the same forms of scrutiny, mockery and criticism when overpaid athletes don’t perform in their field. Sometimes it even leads to athletes being traded away or dropped from the roster as a “walk of shame away” from a bad investment.

I believe it’s time for the entire esports industry to grow a pair or face the music, whichever metaphor you prefer. Overpaid athletes and underpaying organizations both need to held accountable, and we might just reach a consensus on how much our industry is actually worth, maybe even get some stability in the process.

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