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The Indian gaming industry has seen a significant amount of growth in the last couple of years, especially the mobile gaming industry with titles like Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI) having a huge surge in players. The number of players, content creators and esports organizations have been increasing day by day and there has been fierce competition amongst the players as well as the organizations to stay at the top.
There have been rumors of esports organizations implementing a salary cap for esports players in order to resolve issues such as poaching. In the past, there have been multiple instances where BGMI esports organizations owners called out other teams for approaching their players after achieving success in tournaments.
Why are esports organizations implementing a cap on players salaries?
Esports organizations in India invest a lot of money in running their operations and the majority of it is mainly focused on player salaries. It is rumored that India's top esports athletes earn a monthly salary of around INR 2-3 Lakhs and esports organizations want to introduce cap strategies to avoid players being poached by offering higher salaries.
Recently, Rohit Jagasia, Owner and CEO, Revenant Esports took to X (formerly Twitter) to call out people from the esports industry for poaching players from the team. According to him, after the conclusion of the Skyesports Championship 5.0 and Upthrust Esports Diwali Battle 2023 LAN Events, held in Bangalore in November 2023, someone had approached a player from the Revenant Esports BGMI team.
KR Rohith, the CEO of Gods Reign had also shared a post recently saying that an organization had registered a player from Gods Reign in their team for the Battlegrounds Mobile India Pro Series (BMPS) 2023 event. He also went on to add that neither the player nor the organization were aware of this situation.
According to the estimates by Statista, as of November 2023 the esports industry in India saw a revenue of $107.8 Million USD which included revenues from media rights, merchandise and ticketing, streaming, sponsorship and advertising, publisher fees and more. The number is expected to increase in the coming years as the player base for different Mobile and PC esports titles, like Valorant and Call of Duty Mobile (CODM), is growing at a faster rate.
Capping players salaries will help esports organizations maintain consistency and stability in running operations in the long run and also help to grow the gaming industry as a whole.
