Esports Earnings: Do Bigger Prizes Mean Better Plays?
Offline esports events are a dime to watch, whereas online tournaments are typically perceived as less prestigious. One reason is the amount of prize money (tournament structure). This incentive for players and teams may impact their performance. Here's what the science says.
• Offline tournaments are more prestigious, in part due to a higher amount of prize money.
• The spread in prize money between online and offline tournaments may impact their performance.
• HLTV data from 1,272 tournaments were analyzed and showed that the higher the prize spread, the better the performance.
• However, this motivation to perform is lower in online tournaments.
• A higher prize pool decreases performance, due to higher competitive opponents.
Live, offline esports tournaments are a pleasure for the viewers' eyes. For the players, offline events typically put more pressure on them due to the high level of competition and what's at stake (prize money, sponsorships etc.). Online tournaments, on the other hand, are often less prestigious and end up having fewer viewer numbers. In this sense, online tournaments are also less risky.
Although there are many reasons why this is, one of them is the amount of tournament prize money. It is worth asking if this spread in prize money–hence tournament structure–has an impact on the players' performance.
"Taking into account that online format is less prestigious, the players will demonstrate a lower performance (in comparison with offline performance) for the same spread." [1]
In other words, the same prize money spread will lead to less individual performance in online tournaments. To test the hypothesis, the researchers collected CS:GO tournament data from HLTV. They analyzed 1,272 tournaments involving 1,533 players across 1,382 teams between June 2017 and March 2022. 57% of them were conducted online–which isn't surprising, since all tournaments switched to online due to the pandemic.
Individual performance was assessed using HLTV's "rating 2.0". In short: if a player has a rating >1, he typically outperforms the average players in the ranking. They also incorporated the team's ranking.
📈 Money Talks
The first, interesting finding was that "the best player outperforms the average one by over 3 times. 42.3% of players in the sample have ratings smaller than 1." [1]
The second finding was that the higher the prize spread, the better the performance. Makes sense. If you know that winning the next round in the tournament will grant you more money compared to the average tournament, you will try your best to deliver your A-game. In addition, the researchers found that this difference in motivation, caused by the difference in prize spread, is lower for online tournaments. In other words, you give it a little less than your best when playing online vs. offline.
"... it is observed that the prize pool has a consistent negative impact on performance, a finding that may initially seem counterintuitive." [1]
Although counterintuitive, it makes sense. As the researchers point out, more prestigious tournaments have a higher prize pool. This brings in higher-skilled players. Thus, your competition is stronger. As a consequence, it is harder for you–as a player–to get a high performance (measured as the HLTV ranking 2.0 score). So, a higher prize pool decreases the individual player's performance scores.
This also means that the chance of complete stomps should decrease and matches should be more even. If this is true, I don't know. Just taking an educated guess here.
🥡 The Takeaways
"Taking into account that eSports players are mostly representatives of digital natives, it appears relevant to notice that they are sensitive to reward structures, such as prize differentials and prize inequality." [1]
Have a great Sunday, Monday, Tuesday... 'Till next week.
Christian 🙂
