The Reality Behind Esports

There are more similarities between e-sports and professional sports (such as football or basketball) than you might think. Players in both fields dedicate innumerable hours to honing their craft by practicing with teammates, training on particular fields or maps, and devoting nearly every waking moment to making themselves better at their prospective aspirations.

There are now professional gamers who can and do make a living playing video games. ESportsEarning.com publishes the earnings of the top 100 players, and the salaries range from just over $115k to more than $506k for the top player, with the average being $218k

Money is a great motivator, but just like professional athletes, there's more to the story. The attraction to fame -- to become the next big thing -- is a draw for those searching for acceptance. There's also the motivation of doing what you love for a living—a feeling unfelt in many lives.

But it's not all fame and fortune.

As players and teams continually try to establish themselves amongst professional gaming’s elite, the road is a difficult one. For each person that has made it professionally, thousands have failed. Still others, like newcomer Axon Gaming, stumble into success by pure happen stance.Axon Gaming initially began as a Call of Duty clan, lead by “Andy M” aka “I Mossy Oak I” and “Paul D.”— also known as the popular Machinima Director “R0KL0bStEr”. After positioning themselves near the top of the Diamond Division during Clan Wars, the solid team of players they recruited started branching out into professional gaming events. These events helped them earn sponsorships for their offshoot teams, Axon-Vitality and Axon-Ravish.“

For each person that has made it professionally, thousands have failed.

“They kept finishing at the top of their divisions during [Call of Duty] League Play, so eventually they got to practicing more and more, and decided to take a jump and go to UMG Dallas,” recalled Andy M. "Overall, they hung in with some of the good competitive teams [UMG] had out there.”

Paul D. admitted that simply showing up and playing became the easiest part of taking a team to the professional level, while the most difficult adjustment came from the business side of things. “We’ve had to transition everything we do about gaming. It’s like a business now and we have to run it as such. You’ve got people watching — sponsors and potential sponsors, as well as fans — so you have to conduct yourself better than your average gamer.”

Luckily for Axon Gaming, it's an area in which they’ve excelled.

 By Josh Smith 

Eager to deflect credit for Axon Gaming’s success, Paul D. and Andy M. both cite great teammates and solid leaders within as reasons for their success with sponsorships. Andy takes it further, crediting his wife Cheryl, another founder, as the reason that Axon Gaming runs so smoothly. “She’s the glue that holds this all together,” he says.

Fish In A Crowded Pond

And while Axon Gaming is working towards being successful, more and more teams like them are opting to try their hands at professional gaming, saturating the already crowded field. That means that even while the level of competition is increasing, despite massive spikes in its popularity through recent years, space is still limited. A good analogy would be to think of everyone as aboard the Titanic, while it's sinking, and the life boats are professional gaming contracts. There’s far too few for those who are struggling to stay afloat.

Almost a taboo topic, most teams and their members are hesitant to speak of their missteps and reasons for failure. For “Brandon D.” though, he’d rather share the truth about what professional gaming does to you. Brandon attempted to go professional in the popular Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA)  League of Legends under the name “Exempt Puddle.” Solemnly, he explained how it all fell apart.