Hong “YellOw” Jin-ho, a former StarCraft player, has recently revealed how much SKT T1's superstar Faker is earning. We have decided to put up a comparison between League of Legends' most popular player and Fortnite's streamer Ninja.
Hong “YellOw” Jin-ho was a guest on MBC's RadioStar, which is a Korean cable TV talk show that hosts various celebrities of different professions. He mentioned SKT T1's Faker who he was promoting a mobile game with previously, and noted that Faker's yearly earnings are about 3 billion won, which translates to roughly $3 million USD or £2,1 million.
Faker's earnings get almost doubled if you factor in his incentives, at which point his paycheck grows to 5 billion won, meaning $5 million USD or £3,5 million. Riot Games have led a rather secretive system when it comes to the players' earnings so far, but the cat had to get out of the bag sooner or later. Even the check amplified by incentives isn't the final form of Faker's salary since it doesn't include promotional bonuses, such as the aforementioned mobile game promotion he attended with YellOw.
Riot Games
This information slipped due to YellOw going down the memory lane when he was professionally playing StarCraft. He was drawing a comparison between earnings made by today's professional players and those that were available back in his day. Winning a major tournament could earn him about $20.000 USD which is about £14.000, and his hard work would net him about $100.000 or £70.200 per year. He made a note of how players today can earn the same amount of money with less effort.
Faker's earnings may look very high to us mere mortals but if you divide his $5 million by 12, you will see that he makes about $417.670 USD or £293,300 a month which seemingly makes it slim pickings compared to Fortnite's streamer Tyler "Ninja" Blevins. Ninja made headlines recently by earning a whopping $1.7 million USD (£1,2 million) in a single month. He is definitely the record holder for highest revenue in a single month when it comes to professional players and streamers but his income is not exactly stable.
Twitch
It largely depends on Twitch viewer count and their subsequent donations as well as subscriptions. Ninja's revenue can go down to $350.000 (~£245.000) during the "slow months". When these earnings are averaged, they seem fairly equal for both players but Ninja makes incredible bumps in revenue each time a new kind of event pops up.
Faker's contract offers a more stable and foreseeable future, but with Ninja's charisma it is hard to see his stream crashing down any time soon. Although, considering the massive revenue of both Fortnite and League of Legends, it makes you wonder what the reactions in Tencent's offices are when they see the earnings Riot Games and Epic Games make for them. "Meh, another billion".
