Study Finds Gender Disparities in Esports Viewership and Prize Money
A new academic study examining professional Counter-Strike esports competitions found that female players receive fewer views and earn less prize money than male players, even after accounting for measures of performance.
The study, “Gender, Performance, and Prize Money: A Study of Pay Discrimination Against Female Teams in eSports,” was published in 2026 in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications by researcher Petr Parshakov (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=VDiK-bAAAAAJ&hl=ru).
Using data from Counter-Strike: Global Offensive competitions, the study analyzed relationships among player performance, audience viewership and prize money. The research focused on events from the ESL Impact League, a women-focused esports circuit, and comparable male competitions.
The study examined data from 40 tournaments between 2022 and 2024, including 34 female-only tournaments. Researchers analyzed results involving 163 teams and more than 3,000 players. Data was obtained from HLTV, a Counter-Strike statistics platform, while viewership information was gathered from Twitch.
According to the study, female players received significantly lower average viewership and prize winnings than male players.
Male players in the sample averaged prize winnings of approximately $28,202, compared with $5,709 for female players. Male competitors also averaged substantially higher viewership figures than female competitors.
Researchers used regression models to examine whether differences remained after controlling for performance. Performance was measured using kill-to-death ratio, a common esports statistic that compares the number of opponents a player eliminates to the number of times the player is eliminated.
The analysis found that higher performance was associated with increased viewership for both male and female players. However, the relationship between performance and audience size was weaker for female competitors.
The study reported that female players attracted fewer views than male players with comparable performance metrics. Researchers found a statistically significant interaction between gender and kill-to-death ratio, suggesting that improvements in performance generated smaller gains in viewership for female players than for male players.
The Relationship Between Performance and Prize Money Was Weaker for Female Players
The study also examined how performance and viewership translated into prize money.
Researchers found that both higher kill-to-death ratios and larger audiences were associated with greater prize earnings. However, the relationship between performance and prize money was weaker for female players.
The study reported that while performance contributed to earnings for both groups, the connection between skill and prize money was not as strong among female competitors as it was among male competitors.
At the same time, researchers found that viewership had a stronger association with prize money for female players than for male players after controlling for performance. The study described this as a positive interaction between audience size and gender in the prize-money model.
Despite that finding, the study reported that female players still earned substantially less prize money on average than male players.
The author noted that esports provides an opportunity to examine compensation disparities in a setting where performance depends primarily on strategic decision-making, reaction time and coordination rather than physical strength.
The study also placed its findings within a broader body of research on gender disparities in sports and entertainment. It cited previous work documenting differences in pay, media coverage and representation experienced by female athletes and content creators.
Researchers acknowledged several limitations.
Male and female competitors participated in separate tournaments, meaning the study did not observe direct competition between the groups. The author cautioned that performance measures such as kill-to-death ratio reflected results within gender-segregated competitive environments and should not be interpreted as direct comparisons under identical competitive conditions.
The study also noted that the analysis focused on prize money and match-level viewership rather than total earnings. Other potential revenue streams, including sponsorship agreements, merchandise sales, appearance fees and coaching opportunities, were not included in the dataset.
In addition, the author stated that the observational design of the research limits the ability to make causal claims regarding the reasons behind the disparities identified in the study.
The paper concluded that female players attracted fewer views and earned less prize money than male players even after accounting for performance measures. It also found that performance translated into audience attention and financial rewards differently for male and female competitors.
The author wrote that future research could examine mixed-gender competition, alternative performance measures and additional sources of esports-related income to provide a more comprehensive understanding of economic outcomes in the industry.