PvP as a Profession

style="">Can You Earn a Living
Through PvP

Let’s
face it, not many of us have the mad skills to earn
the vaulted World
of Warcraft PvP
rating of 3,000. Only a few of groups have done it so far. Of the
subset of
players that vie for those honors, some are professionals. That means
they get
paid to play. Typically, they only get paid when they win; very few
receive a
salary. In a world where athletes like Tiger Woods makes $22+ million a
year
(plus endorsements of well over $100 million), can we earn enough
playing video
games like WoW to put food on the table? Well maybe, depending on your
tastes.

When
most American sports started out as club sports (i.e.
football, baseball, basketball, etc.) the players earned very little.
The pay
was subsistence living where the players earned enough to live, and the
reward
was playing a game they loved instead of getting a real job. This is
where
video game pros are currently residing. Mainstream games such as Halo
provide
Tom “Tsquared” Taylor with over $100,000 dollars a
year. There is money to be
made, but even the PvP stars of WoW at the pinnacle of the sport
can’t make six
figures on winnings alone.

Making
a Donkey Hybrid of Ourselves

In the
hopes of making some realistic assumptions (and thus
making an ass of ourselves), I am going to assume that a top rated PvP
team can
pull in two regional tournament wins ($8,000 each), one national win
($25,000)
and a couple of lesser tournament victories ($2,500 each) to bring the
total
earnings of a 3v3 team to a whopping $48,500, or $16,167 per player in
winnings. I think this is aggressive, but we’re talking about
the best of the
best, right? Add a salary to the winnings of $2,000 a month and we end
up with
$40,166 per player per year. This is not Park Avenue condo type money,
but it
isn’t bad for a side business. style="">

Let’s go to the tale
of the tape: Wages across professional
sports.

The
following table illustrates the earning potential of the
top players in each sport. All dollar figures are in U.S. dollars (not
Euros,
Canadian Dollars or any other currency that happens to be holding its
value –
unlike the U.S. version). All figures are from href="http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/more/specials/fortunate50/index.html">Sports
Illustrated reports and do not
include endorsements or playoffs:

style="border: medium none ; border-collapse: collapse;"
border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
style="border: 1pt solid black; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 116.2pt;"
valign="top" width="155">

style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"> style="">Sport

style="border-style: solid solid solid none; border-color: black black black -moz-use-text-color; border-width: 1pt 1pt 1pt medium; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 114.95pt;"
valign="top" width="153">

style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center; line-height: normal;"
align="center">$/Year
style="border-style: solid solid solid none; border-color: black black black -moz-use-text-color; border-width: 1pt 1pt 1pt medium; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 133.3pt;"
valign="top" width="178">

style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center; line-height: normal;"
align="center">$/Week
or

style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center; line-height: normal;"
align="center">Match/Game/Tournament
style="border-style: solid solid solid none; border-color: black black black -moz-use-text-color; border-width: 1pt 1pt 1pt medium; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 114.35pt;"
valign="top" width="152">

style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center; line-height: normal;"
align="center">$/Minute

style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center; line-height: normal;"
align="center">of
Play
style="border-style: none solid solid; border-color: -moz-use-text-color black black; border-width: medium 1pt 1pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 116.2pt;"
valign="top" width="155">

style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"> style="color: black;"> style="font-weight: bold;">Boxing

style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"> style="color: black;">(Floyd Mayweather Jr.)

style="border-style: none solid solid none; border-color: -moz-use-text-color black black -moz-use-text-color; border-width: medium 1pt 1pt medium; padding: 0in 5.4pt; width: 114.95pt;"
valign="bottom" width="153">

style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center; line-height: normal;"
align="center"> style="color: black;">20,000,000

style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center; line-height: normal;"
align="center"> style="color: black;">10,000,000 per fight

style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center; line-height: normal;"
align="center"> style="color: black;">277,778