Esports has been on the rise since the early 2000s and has continued to rise in 2022. It started with some friends grouping up together to play a multiplayer game for fun competition and evolved into worldwide competitions with huge cash prizes. A study done by VarsityEsportsGamingResearch found that out of the age groups of fifteen to seventeen, 97% of them play video games. There are millions of gamers around the world and E-sports is another way to connect them all with friendly competition. An article by Joe Drape states that thirteen to fifteen-year-olds are making thousands of dollars by winning and competing in E-Sports competitions. This is a good example of how gaming has evolved from a normal hobby into a possible career choice in the future. The average E-sports player makes about 50,000 to 75,000 annually which can vary depending on which game and team you play for. It is universally agreed that Faze Clan started the face of E-sports and whenever someone thinks about gaming, Faze clan is one of the first things to come up. The main reason for this capstone project is to inform and give examples of how Esports could be a possible career path. It's supposed to help convince people that disagree with Esports and don't think it cannot be a career path and to inform gamers that want to see if gaming could be a possible career path for their future. I hope that the result of this project is that instead of people viewing Esports as a waste of time, they can see it as a viable career path for anyone.

The main reason Esports players make so much is because of sponsorships. Companies see that people are invested in video games and so they offer sponsorships to players so they can advertise their product or use it. The majority of wealthy Esports players have multiple sponsorships so they can make more money and so they have access to some of their products too. Esports is a very profitable career but not a very secure one. Because if you want to make a career out of gaming you have to be willing to put the time in even when you don't want to. You have to also be the best of the best because getting recruited to an Esports team is extremely hard and very rare. There are also a huge amount of video games out there so you have to make sure you pick one that you enjoy, are amazing at, and is very popular. You also have to be popular on social media and well known because video games revolve around a whole ranking system and you can't get your content out there if you don't stream or post videos of you playing video games. A study done by Statista.com shows that Twitch is the most viewed gaming platform in the world with over nine point two million active streamers daily and over one hundred and forty million viewers, which is a lot of competition. This is why E-sports being a career is such a debatable topic because it's so random and there are a lot of criteria you have to meet. Being popular or gaining fame is the hardest one of them all because content plays a part in this and if you don't play well or produce good content then no one will know who you are. Then if no one knows who you are when you can't be recruited to a team. But this is not all bad because there are plenty of people who just stream video games and make money off of donations but that is another topic.

Esports might become a more common career if it were more secure in the financial aspect of it. Because it's not guaranteed that you will get on a team. You might not get any sponsorships which is the main source of income for most gamers according to an article by Inside Intelligence about the money and income each play for each game makes annually. Esports can most definitely become a viable career choice for gamers it just needs more worldwide recognition to be able to have more teams for competitions because worldwide there are only about 180 teams. And there are about 10 people per team which only makes 1800 slots available. And out of 7 billion people, that’s about a 0.00000027% chance of you getting on one of those teams out of everyone in the world. But not everyone is a gamer so the chances are way higher, this is just an estimate. In an article by Chandler Hubbard, posted on May 27th, 2022, the article there is about a 0.00008% chance that you will be able to get onto a team. This can vary from where you live because there are fewer Esports teams in Europe than there are in the U.S or any other area.

Overall Esports evolving into a possible career choice is a possibility. The problem is that there is not enough recognition for underground players and smaller gaming teams. We can fix this by creating other leagues for intermediate players to expert players. If this is implemented there is a definite possibility that Esports can become a vital career choice for gamers. It is suggested that gamers planning on competing in Esports that they make sure that they have a good following on social media are extremely good at a video game (mainly opinion-based), and have plans if things don't work out. Esports has come this far and brought so many people together, and it has a possibility to evolve into something greater. The product of this project is educating people on how people can Earn money from Esports and how it is a sustainable job and help people become more confident about joining. Because If people join it will become more popular which means more tournaments and leagues can be funded which means higher payouts for gamers that are competing. If Esports becomes a career path then that means so many more people will join and companies will see the rise in gaming and jump on it quickly with sponsorships and other types of funding which will make it even more viable as a career path for gamers and anyone else. I am saying the product of this is a domino effect that will lead to the financial success of gamers looking to capitalize on their video game skills. This is why people should listen because I believe that everyone wants to make money easily in their life, so if they want to find an easy way to make money and have some success in their life they should listen to what I have to say because it will benefit them in the long run of video games can see.