How Much Do You Earn for Winning the FIFAe World Cup?

The world of eSports has come on leaps and bounds in recent years. Around 15 years ago, gamers competed to be called the best players in the world. Nowadays, they compete for that same title, as well as bucketloads of prize money. Competitive gaming has grown so much that online bookmakers now allow eSport betting on a wealth of different games.

We’re sure you’re aware of the most popular eSports competitions around today. The likes of CS:GO, League of Legends, and Dota 2 all perform incredibly when it comes to viewership levels. But before all of these games was FIFA. EA Sports was a pioneer of the competitive gaming space before it became a mainstream sensation. They have been running the FIFAe World Cup — or FIFA Interactive World Cup, as it used to be known — since 2004 and next year's tournament will mark two decades of the tournament.

But how much have the world's best FIFA players picked up over the years for their virtual domination? Let's find out.

2004 - 2016: $20,000

Throughout the first twelve years of the tournament, the grand prize for global glory was $20,000. The runner-up would receive $5,000 and third place would receive $1,000, taking the total prize pot to $26,000. Over the years, the number of competitors participating in the tournament would steadily grow, and at the dawn of the 2010s, things truly took off.

In 2010, the FIFAe World Cup entered the Guinness World Records for most total competitors, a record they would then smash in 2013 when more than 2.5 million players participated, a record which still stands today. Naturally, as both the number of competitors and viewership levels increased, so did the prize fund

2017: $200,000

In 2017, EA Sports announced that they would increase the winner's share of the total prize fund tenfold, increasing it from $20,000 to $200,000. The overall prize fund increased even more than that and was taken up to a whopping $400,000, with gamers who reach a minimum of the last sixteen stage all receiving prize money. Denmark’s Mohamad Al-Bacha, who lifted the trophy in 2016, must have been truly gutted when England’s Spencer Ealing walked away with ten times the amount that he did the previous year.

2018 - Present: $250,000

In 2018, after just one year of the increased prize fund, EA Sports would go one better by upping the grand prize to $250,000. Mosaad Al Dossary, Mohammed Harkous, and the reigning champion Umut Gültekin have all been lucky and talented enough to scoop up this prize in recent years.