It is a depressing day when I check all my bank and investment accounts and realise that I am not even 20% of this young Melbourne teenager. Yes, Anathan “ana” Pham has won an E-Sports Tournament with his team OG. Team OG are the 2019 Dota 2 champions and have taken home USD$15,615,897 of the USD$34,320,653 ( AUD$51,000,000). – and Pham took home $4.6 million of this prize money to Melbourne – how awesome is that. Did I say he is also still a teenager?
The world of E-Sports may be foreign to peeps like you and I, or maybe not if you are a gamer, but it is basically like an Olympics just playing video games Olympics, and it is a sport which has really garnered participants, supporters and fans. For Pham, his total career earnings are around $8.9 million, so yes he is pretty much set for life.
Dota 2 E-Sports Tournaments are the most popular and coveted titles and has the biggest prize money in any gaming tournament. According to the Financial Review, Pham ranks at number 13 in terms of highest paid athletes in Australia and since 2015 has been living in Shanghai to train for the tournament – good on him!
So as we all wake up and go to work tomorrow morning, spare a thought that maybe one day we too can be an E-Sports champion like Pham, or maybe in our dreams. For something where our Asian parents would berate us as time wasters is now an official career and competitive sport.