How Much Money Did London Spitfire Make In 2020?
The London Spitfire are one of the two European franchises in the Overwatch League and are among the 12 founding teams that started the journey in the inaugural season. Not just that, on the back of their team of superstars, the team also managed to bring the title home in the first season, taking home the $1,000,000 (~£715,000) grand prize.
Since then, the direction of the team has changed frequently and significantly, with the current roster consisting of a mostly European player pool with many of them promoted from the Spitfire’s academy team British Hurricane. In 2020 however, the Spitfire still opted for an entirely Korean roster of promising rookies competing in the Asian region. Unfortunately for the Spitfire, the competition was too fierce, and the team didn’t manage to make a single-stage final or the playoffs.
There are many ways to answer the question of how much money the Spitfire made in 2020. Are you looking for the amount of prize money won? Are you looking for individual player salaries? Are you asking about the team financials? For some, we have good answers; for others, the books are closed.
How Much Money Did London Spitfire Make In 2020 in prizes?
Unfortunately, their main roster wasn’t very successful also due to the steep competition in the APAC region that they competed in. Hence, the sad facts are that the London Spitfire couldn’t claim any prize money for themselves in 2020. Only Gil-seong "Glister" Lim was able to grab some extra cash for his participation in the All-Star event, but that amount is relatively negligible with having to divide the $90,000 (~£65,000) between the 12 players on team Asia.
However, you might count their academy team, the British Hurricane, towards their 2020 winnings, and here it looks quite a bit more impressive, winning every single competition in Contenders in 2020. With utter domination in Contenders and other smaller tournaments, the Hurricane won an impressive $166,136 (~£120,000) in 2020.
How Much Money Did London Spitfire’s Players Make In 2020 in salaries?
Here, we don’t have any hard data, but we can make rough estimations as to the amount of the salary the Spitfire paid its players. At a League-mandated minimum of $50,000 (~£36,000) annually and with a starting roster of 12 players, we arrive at a minimum roster overhead of $600,000 (~£420,000). We can also safely assume that not every single one of these contracts were at league minimum, with at least players of the calibre of Glister likely commanding a higher salary. On top of just salaries, certain benefits like health insurance are also league-mandated, further adding to the value players received. Lastly, bonuses could theoretically be part of the players’ contracts, though we have no explicit knowledge of that amount for now.
How Much Money Did London Spitfire’s Players Make In 2020 in revenue?
The exact revenue of the London Spitfire in 2020 is completely unknown, with few good guesses helping our guestimate. Very infrequently, we get to hear bits and pieces of the teams stack up against each other, with, for instance, Toronto Defiant’s ownership disclosing that they were among the highest-earning in the Overwatch League based on their active fanbase last year. Unfortunately, at no point did the Spitfire show up in these metrics through 2020, giving us not much to go on to take an educated guess. Only their conservative and home market-focused spending habits suggest that they hadn’t found a satisfying model that worked for them in the Overwatch League.
Image via London Spitfire
