A comparative analysis of top earning female and male esports players: assessing social media activity

Abstract

Aims: The aim of this study was to compare social media engagement of the top tournament- earning male and top tournament-earning female esports players to determine if social media engagement relates to competition tournament earnings and differs based upon gender. Methods and Results: Eighty-one top tournament earning esports players, the top tournament earning forty- one females and the top tournament earning forty males, were chosen as the sample size for this study. The players’ social media followers on the platform Twitter (X) were analyzed. Results indicated that the top tournament-earning male players earn significantly more than the top tournament-earning female players; however, the top female tournament-earning esports professionals often have a greater number of social media followers and rates of engagement than their top tournament-earning male counterparts. Conclusions: The study indicated that the top- earning female esports professionals earned approximately $3.2 million less in tournament prize money than the top-earning male players during the study period, confirming previous research and anecdotal evidence that females are severely underrepresented on the top performing teams and in the highest earning tournaments. However, despite earning much lower overall tournament prize money, numerous top tournament-earning female esports players have a large social media following that often surpasses many of the male top tournament-earning esports players, indicating that potentially powerful marketing opportunities exist if brands utilize top tournament-earning female esports professionals. Future studies should analyze the public reaction to top tournament- earning female professionals in other areas of their non-performance life (sponsorship, public appearances, etc.) to determine if such players have a similar or potentially greater impact than their male counterparts.