Highest-earning Norwegian eSports gamers 2023

Chess grandmaster Håvard Nygaard, also known by his online alias rain, was the highest earning eSports player from Norway in 2023. The World Chess Champion earned over 468 thousand U.S. dollars in 2023 through his online exploits on chess eSports websites such as chess.com and chess24. 

Leading eSports players worldwide

Top of the list of highest earning eSports players worldwide by overall earnings is Johan Sundstein of Norway, also known as N0tail. The gamer earned most of his winnings playing Dota 2 eSports tournaments. Dota 2 (Defense of the Ancients 2) is an online battle arena game first published by Valve in 2013. The annual cumulative tournament prize pool for Dota 2 events worldwide reaches into the millions of U.S. dollars every year. The biggest event of the year for this game is The International, which pits the best Dota 2 teams against each other to win a mammoth prize pool. The International 10, Dota 2's 2022 championship, which took place in Bucharest, had a prize pool of almost 19 million U.S. dollars, down from 40 million a year earlier.

eSports viewership

eSports is not just about participation and in recent years it has become a spectator sport for millions of gaming fans around the world. In fact, the eSports audience size worldwide is expected to increase from approximately 435.7 million in 2020 to 640.8 million by 2025. Of these estimated viewers in 2025, some 318.1 million eSports fans are expected to be frequent viewers and enthusiasts, while 322.7 million are forecast to be occasional viewers.