3 ms·

The money just isn't there. It's just like any CCG "pro" scene. The time investment isn't worth the rewards. My friends and I would play Magic: the Gathering c

by bena 5y ago

The money just isn't there. It's just like any CCG "pro" scene. The time investment isn't worth the rewards. My friends and I would play Magic: the Gathering competitively, hitting the qualifiers and feeder tournaments. We did ok. Cashed some tournaments between us. Won some state championships between us. None of us ever qualified for the Pro Tour however. Because, I was a working software developer. I wasn't going to drop that job to make less for more overall effort. Another of us is an engineer. Same thing. His job paid more unless he could guarantee winning major tournaments consistently. It's a young man's game, because it's a poor man's game. And while NFL players have an average career around 3 or 4 years, they're clearing a few hundred thousand each of those years. There's a lot of churn at the bottom end of NFL rosters. A lot of guys don't make it through their rookie contract. If you make it 3 years, you're likely play for about 6 or 7. If I remember correctly, I ran the numbers on this at one point. Essentially "average career" is a lot like "life expectancy", it's greatly affected by the sports equivalent of infant mortality. So, in sports, you have a lot of guys with decent careers to pull the average up. In eSports, the number of people with careers longer than a couple of years is rare. Because the money isn't there.

dehrmann 5y ago
> It's a young man's game, because it's a poor man's game. MTG? A poor man's game?! HAH! ...Unless you mean it's the reason he's poor.
- bena 5y ago
  Considering the amount professional sports spends per player, yeah, it is. The average cost of a Legacy deck is $4000. And that's a one-time expense. After that, the on-going costs: sleeves, entry fees, travel, etc aren't horrible. But plenty of poor people play Magic. More poor people than affluent people. Plenty of people make poor financial decisions. Like buying boosters instead of singles to get cards for decks. Like trying to make playing Magic a career instead of anything else.
  - entropie 5y ago
    Wizard is about to transition to more of an online competitive scene. I don't know how its compared to other games, but there is good money on the table and the promise that "everyone could win a tournament for the big money" (I think that's not true. MTG is way to much dependent on RNG). For like two years everyone is able to attend to events the client offers that can lead to an invitation to more events that eventually lead to tourniers where real money is on the table. https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Red_Bull_Untapped https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Red_Bull_Untapped
    - bena 5y ago
      Magic's all time money leader is Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa (PVDDR). He is a hall of fame player who has been playing professionally for 19 years. He's won just over a million dollars in that time frame. That's the equivalent of making around $57k a year. They're doubling the prize purse for the Pro Tour this year. So, at best, someone could make $2 million with the same results over the same time frame. Red Bull Untapped had a prize purse of $200,000. That's $50,000 less than the old Pro Tour had. Not to mention, that's the entire purse. If you won an offline qualifier and the finals, you would have won $30k. For contrast, the NFL pays $75,000 to each player on the losing team in the Super Bowl. That's outside of their normal salary. That's money paid to the players by the league itself (from a pool of money collected from the member clubs). And playoff bonuses go all the way down. If you're a wild card team who loses in the wild card round, that's $37,500 per player. Being the 7th seed and getting bounced in the first game of the NFL playoffs pays better than winning the entire Red Bull series. And that's ignoring that the NFL playoff bonuses are pure extra. There is not "real money" there. It's at best amateur league.
amyjess 5y ago
> A lot of guys don't make it through their rookie contract. My dad had a friend who was a Dallas Cowboy for... a few months. He spent all of summer training and the preseason partying and goofing off thinking he had it made for life. They ended up giving him the boot before the first regular season game. Somehow I have a feeling his "career" wasn't entirely uncommon. By the time I met him, he was a children's exercise coach at a local rec center.
- bena 5y ago
  "Camp bodies". Guys who are drafted in the later rounds or undrafted free agents. NFL rosters start at 90 during the training camp period. During the preseason (which is part of training camp), teams have to eventually cut down to the final 53 man roster and (now) 14 players will be selected to be on the practice squad after being cut. So generally, there will be about 33 players who are not making the team in any fashion. Generally more because players will be signed and released during training camp as well. But yeah, teams sometimes just need bodies. They're not looking for the next NFL star, they're looking for someone with a certain minimum athletic ability to occupy a spot on the field. Warm bodies to fill camp slots. They're like some of the most awkward calls. Because the teams are trying to sign a guy for a few weeks and the agent is trying to get his guy paid.

by bena 5y ago

dehrmann 5y ago

> It's a young man's game, because it's a poor man's game. MTG? A poor man's game?! HAH! ...Unless you mean it's the reason he's poor.

bena 5y ago
Considering the amount professional sports spends per player, yeah, it is. The average cost of a Legacy deck is $4000. And that's a one-time expense. After that, the on-going costs: sleeves, entry fees, travel, etc aren't horrible. But plenty of poor people play Magic. More poor people than affluent people. Plenty of people make poor financial decisions. Like buying boosters instead of singles to get cards for decks. Like trying to make playing Magic a career instead of anything else.
- entropie 5y ago
  Wizard is about to transition to more of an online competitive scene. I don't know how its compared to other games, but there is good money on the table and the promise that "everyone could win a tournament for the big money" (I think that's not true. MTG is way to much dependent on RNG). For like two years everyone is able to attend to events the client offers that can lead to an invitation to more events that eventually lead to tourniers where real money is on the table. https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Red_Bull_Untapped https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Red_Bull_Untapped
  - bena 5y ago
    Magic's all time money leader is Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa (PVDDR). He is a hall of fame player who has been playing professionally for 19 years. He's won just over a million dollars in that time frame. That's the equivalent of making around $57k a year. They're doubling the prize purse for the Pro Tour this year. So, at best, someone could make $2 million with the same results over the same time frame. Red Bull Untapped had a prize purse of $200,000. That's $50,000 less than the old Pro Tour had. Not to mention, that's the entire purse. If you won an offline qualifier and the finals, you would have won $30k. For contrast, the NFL pays $75,000 to each player on the losing team in the Super Bowl. That's outside of their normal salary. That's money paid to the players by the league itself (from a pool of money collected from the member clubs). And playoff bonuses go all the way down. If you're a wild card team who loses in the wild card round, that's $37,500 per player. Being the 7th seed and getting bounced in the first game of the NFL playoffs pays better than winning the entire Red Bull series. And that's ignoring that the NFL playoff bonuses are pure extra. There is not "real money" there. It's at best amateur league.

amyjess 5y ago

> A lot of guys don't make it through their rookie contract. My dad had a friend who was a Dallas Cowboy for... a few months. He spent all of summer training and the preseason partying and goofing off thinking he had it made for life. They ended up giving him the boot before the first regular season game. Somehow I have a feeling his "career" wasn't entirely uncommon. By the time I met him, he was a children's exercise coach at a local rec center.

bena 5y ago
"Camp bodies". Guys who are drafted in the later rounds or undrafted free agents. NFL rosters start at 90 during the training camp period. During the preseason (which is part of training camp), teams have to eventually cut down to the final 53 man roster and (now) 14 players will be selected to be on the practice squad after being cut. So generally, there will be about 33 players who are not making the team in any fashion. Generally more because players will be signed and released during training camp as well. But yeah, teams sometimes just need bodies. They're not looking for the next NFL star, they're looking for someone with a certain minimum athletic ability to occupy a spot on the field. Warm bodies to fill camp slots. They're like some of the most awkward calls. Because the teams are trying to sign a guy for a few weeks and the agent is trying to get his guy paid.