Infographic compares esports organizations with traditional sports teams
There’s a lot of money to be made at the elite levels of the esports world. No esports organization, however, comes close to the value of teams the Big Four leagues of traditional sports—with a couple of notable exceptions.
A new infographic from Visual Capitalist uses data from Forbes to compare the monetary value of the top 10 esports companies with median franchises in the NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL. As Visual Capitalist’s Omri Wallach writes, “Despite competitive gaming’s rapid growth, there’s still a long way left to go.”
To illustrate that “rapid growth”, Wallach notes that as of 2018, only one esports company was valued at more than US$300 million. By 2020, though, four of the top 10 were worth more than that.
Here’s how the 10 most valuable stack up:
| ESPORTS COMPANY | GAMES WITH FRANCHISES | VALUE (2020) |
|---|---|---|
| TSM | League of Legends (LoL) | $410M |
| Cloud9 | LoL, Overwatch | $350M |
| Team Liquid | LoL | $310M |
| FaZe Clan | Call of Duty (CoD) | $305M |
| 100 Thieves | LoL, CoD | $190M |
| Gen.G | LoL, Overwatch, NBA 2K | $185M |
| Enthusiast Gaming | CoD, Overwatch | $180M |
| G2 Esports | LoL | $175M |
| NRG Esports | CoD, Overwatch | $155M |
| T1 | LoL | $150M |
Hockey money
Those numbers are certainly impressive, especially when you consider that a few of them are higher than the valuation of certain pro sports teams. Sorry, hockey fans; esports leader TSM is worth more than five NHL franchises. “In fact,” Wallach writes, “four esports companies were estimated to be more valuable than two NHL franchises, the Florida Panthers and Arizona Coyotes.”
The NHL, of course, is not where the big money lies in pro sports. According to Forbes, the median value of an NHL franchise in 2020 was US$520 million. In contrast, the MLB, NBA, and NFL each had median values of over US$1.6 billion.
In other words, esports teams have a lot of catching up to do before they hit the big leagues—partnerships with big-ticket brands like Cadillac and BMW notwithstanding.
