Finland takes the crown for the country with the biggest gender pay gap in Esports, globally. Female gamers earn an average annual earnings of just $332, equating to just 7 cents to every $100 earnt by their male counterparts — whose average annual earnings rack up to $459,925. That’s a 99.93% difference between the two salaries.
Online gaming in Finland is thriving, there are three professional Finnish Esports gamers ranking in the top 100 for all highest earning gamers (all male). The highest earning of those being Jesse “JerAx” Vainikka (male), who has a total earnings of over $6 million. There are currently no female Finnish gamers in the top 500 but there are 10 female Finnish gamers in the top 500 highest earning females. Tuula Rantala, who plays under the same name, is the highest female earner, ranking 502nd of all gamers in Finland, with total earnings of just over $1000.
Peruvian female gamers earn 99.62% less than male gamers
In second place is Peru. Earning an annual average of $312 compared to the male gamers earnings of $81,767, female Peruvian gamers receive $0.38 to every male Peruvian gamers $100. This equates to 99.62% less than the men.
Peru has just 20 female gamers ranking for the country, the highest earning female being Deysi Cori Tello who plays as ‘dey_2018’. The highest earning player, however, is male gamer Steven “StingeR” Vargas who ranks in the Top 500 earners. There are currently no female Peruvian gamers in the top 500.
Female gamers in Malaysia earn 2 times that of Finland
Malaysia has the third largest gender pay gap in Esports. The average annual earnings for Malaysian female gamers is $965, a 99.6% decrease in earnings compared to the male gamer earnings of $242,565. However, the average female annual earnings of $965 is 2 times higher than that of Finnish female gamers.
Ramona Zaharuddin, also known as “GFI#”, is the highest earning female Malaysian player, and is but one of 12 professional female gamers in the country.
How the UK ranks
In the UK, female gamers earn 97.91% less annually than male gamers, with female gamers in the UK earning just $2.09 to every $100 earnt by male gamers. This places the UK in 24th place overall for the largest pay gap in Esports. The UK has 65 female players, with four placing in the Overall Top 500 Rankings.
In the UK a male gamer earns on average $204,956 a year, while female gamers earn significantly less at $4,290.
Methodology:
- BesteOnlineCasinos performed the following analysis of Esports earnings consisting of over 21,000 players from 1998 – 2022. The research highlights a substantial discrepancy in earnings between male and female esports players by using relative comparison metrics such as female earnings per $100 of male earnings, and female representation. Breakdowns are provided by country and year.
- Firstly, yearly earnings for the top 500 male and female players in each country were acquired from Esports Earnings. The resulting sample consisted of over 21,000 players with earnings between 1998 – 2022.
- Earnings for each player were subsequently aggregated by country and year to calculate the following metrics: Total number of male and female players, total earnings (for players in the top 500) and average annual earnings of players in the top 50.
- Countries with a sample size less than 10 players (either male or female) were omitted from the results.
Due to the ongoing war in Ukraine and uncertainties around players there, results for this county were removed.
