An NBA player, warming the bench on a poorest performing team, is still making 1 million dollars/year. The equivalent esports player is probably sharing a house with 4 other guys and eating ramen.
Riffing a bit on your point, as best as I can tell, they all pretty much live in team houses or compounds depending upon the country where the team is located — when in China, my relative's then-current team would have lived in dedicated athlete housing that was part of a larger indoor/outdoor multisport stadium complex (COVID changed that and they evacuated to Korea). In the US it's typical to have a large rented team house, often with amenities like a swimming pool.
They eat ramen too, but that's because they like it. Efforts are made with team cooks, but what are you going to do, especially given the fact that these are all young people. Balenciaga kicks and 99c bowls of instant noodles do make an odd combo...
I don't know anything about shoes, but I looked up Balenciaga and those have to be some of the ugliest shoes I have ever seen.
https://www.balenciaga.com/en-us/defender-sneaker-green-6856...
Still, nothing I'd want to buy for 1/10th their asking price, though.
It’s been a while since I followed eSports (League of Legends in 2011-2014?), but all the US and EU players (after getting kicked in the butt by Asian teams who already did it like that) got people that made sure their players would have healthy lifestyles, eating properly, getting enough exercise etc.
Johan Sundstein has made just over $7 million over 9 years. Or about $780k per year. No slouch, obviously. But that's under the average yearly salary for the NBA. If you are the best at your position in most sports, you're starting salary negotiations there.
This is almost kind of cheating as NBA is one of the highest paying leagues on a per player basis.
A top esports player might take a higher % of the total pie, even though the absolute number is smaller.
Choosing to chase after a bigger slice of a smaller pie is still a choice. Especially when you can get more pie by getting a smaller slice of a much bigger pie.
We don't compare salaries across companies along the lines of "percentage of total revenue". Getting 200k TC at FAANG is seen as better than getting 75K anywhere else even if that 75k may represent a higher percentage of that company's revenue.
I don't hold for a moment that the average pro gamer has the skills to transition to "traditional" sports.
So, like, at what level is a choice to grab the smaller pie, vs the choice to focus on a specific skill they do actually have over and above a desk job
If you can make it in NFL, NBA, MLB, etc, you do. And the true superstars often have the option of multiple sports. Patrick Mahomes was drafted for both the NFL and MLB. Lebron James got tryouts with a couple of teams. Bo Jackson had a professional football career and a professional baseball career concurrently.
Football, baseball, rugby, soccer, and basketball all "poach" from the others' sports because athletes gonna athlete.
But badminton is already a cousin to tennis. And if you can do well in tennis, you should do that. The only reason to be the best in badminton rather than the best in tennis is some weird obsession. You choose niches when you can't or don't want to compete in the general arena.
Second. It's not a choice between eSports and traditional sports.
It's a choice between eSports and almost anything else. The goal isn't to play something with sports in the title, the goal is to earn a living. And the best eSports player in the world is getting outearned by mid-level accountants. You could go to college for four years, spend under $40k, get an accounting degree, then go get a job at any accounting firm or in-house at any company, and be earning about $60k a year.
And if college isn't for you, you can become an electrician's apprentice. Earn about $40k a year while you learn how to be a fully licensed electrician. Then after 4 years, you get licensed and can double your money.
Ideally, you should choose the thing that can provide you a decent living while leveraging your skills and/or talents without overworking you.
But eSports doesn't provide a decent living on average. And it overworks everyone.
And that kind of ignores that ability and/or skill is only part of it. The people who are currently the best in areas where the money isn't there are only the best of the people who can be bothered to do it. The hypothetical best CounterStrike player possible probably does not even play the game. Because somewhere, early in the sieve, they did the math and realized the effort required to maintain their position was not worth the reward for doing so. And it could have been when they were the best Quake deathmatcher on their dorm floor. They realized they could continue playing or study for midterms. And they chose their midterms because that was going to secure the bag.
I was picking a random low remuneration sport and suggesting they have a skillset that could have transferred to a different one. It was a broad example for "choosing between sports is a real conceptual thing that athletes who go pro have implicitly done, though they may not have ever considered the options because they were on a path".
> Second. It's not a choice between eSports and traditional sports.
The thread above me is literally acting as though it's a comparison between the two paths being offered. It obviously is not, they're wildly different skillsets.
All that said, obviously eSports is a terrible life choice rationally, unless you want to spend your "working" life doing a thing you love rather than earning maximal money per unit effort. I respect people who do that, as a rule.
As an aside, professional badminton, specifically, is one of those things I think where you wake up some days and realize the very specific things in your life that had to happen to put you where you are. Not something you seek out deliberately.
And I'm not even saying they considered other non-sports options. I'm essentially calling it a stupid decision to not do so. These are people, at least in the eSports/CCG scene, who talk a lot about the expected values of things. And the expected value of a pro eSports/CCG pro career is not good.
And I never said anything about "earning maximal money per unit effort". I said provide a decent living while not overworking you. In eSports, you have to "earn maximal money per unit effort" just to make a living. I'm saying, they should choose a vocation where they can earn better money for less effort units.
I guess what I really meant is that maybe tennis pays better than squash or badminton, but uses very similar skillsets. I was not in anyway proposing they could play in the NFL specifically (hence saying "some other sport")
My claim was basically pro sports people are naturally talented at sports - and which sport they ended up playing pro was more likely to be circumstance than considered choice.
The rest is you just doubling down on "people should choose jobs not passions". Sure, if you like.
I still doubt that. I even doubt that the majority of them could transfer to tennis.
Because there are levels to sports. And it's largely based on where the money is.
And I'm saying you shouldn't sacrifice yourself for your passions.