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On December 13, the team that wins the PGL Major in Singapore will collect $500,000. That is the top slice of a $1.25 million prize pool shared by 32 teams, and the final will be played at the Singapore Indoor Stadium. Counter-Strike holds two Majors a year, and they are the closest thing the game has to a World Cup.
The cheque is the visible part. Behind it sit three income streams that football fans will recognise straight away: a club wage, money for results, and a cut of merchandise with the players’ names on it.
The Prize Money Is Smaller Than It Looks
Split $500,000 five ways and each champion is looking at $100,000 before the club takes anything. How much the club keeps is written into private contracts, so nobody outside the team can say for sure.
Below the winners, the numbers drop fast. According to the prize table on Liquipedia’s PGL Major Singapore page, the runners-up get $170,000, third place $100,000 and fourth $60,000. Teams knocked out in the quarterfinals take $45,000 each. Places 9 to 16 are worth $20,000, places 17 to 24 are worth $10,000, and the eight teams that finish last go home with no prize money at all.
Over a full season, though, it adds up. Esports Earnings credits each team prize evenly to the players on the roster. By that count, the five FURIA players top the 2026 list with $346,625 each at the end of October, helped by a run to the Cologne Major final in June. Most professionals earn a fraction of that.
Wages Are Private, Estimates Are Not
Counter-Strike has no salary cap and no league that files wage bills. What exists are estimates.
One of the most detailed came from journalist Mads Wildenhoff, published by Pley.gg in January after he spoke to more than 20 people across the scene, including players, coaches and agents. He put the monthly player budget at Team Falcons, top of his list, at $240,000 to $260,000 for the starting five. That is roughly $3 million a year. Vitality came next at $210,000 to $230,000 a month, while The MongolZ from Mongolia sat at $40,000 to $50,000.
Wildenhoff himself calls these indicative ranges rather than exact figures. Even so, the gap is the story. Falcons spend about five times as much on players as The MongolZ, and the two can meet at the same Major. In football terms, that is a Premier League giant against a club that has just been promoted.
The Sticker Album That Pays the Players
Football fans grew up on Panini albums. Picture one where the players on the stickers get a share of every packet sold.
At every Major, Valve sells digital stickers inside the game: a logo for each of the 32 teams and an autograph sticker for every player. Fans buy them to put on their in-game guns or to keep as collectibles. Every Major adds a new batch of player autographs to the skins and stickers fans collect, and part of every sale goes to the team.
How big that part is changed this year. In its announcement for the Cologne Major in May, Valve kept the long-standing rule that 50% of Major Shop and Major Pass revenue is paid out as royalties. What changed was the split, as Dust2.us reported. The tournament organiser gets 5%. The other 45% goes to the teams on a sliding scale: 2.85% of all revenue for the champions, 2.53% for the runners-up, and down to 0.72% for the two teams at the very bottom.
Each team’s share is then split in half. One half goes to the club; the other is divided equally between the five players.
Run the numbers for every $1 million fans spend in the shop. The champions earn $28,500, so each player gets $2,850. A team ranked 31st or 32nd earns $7,200, and each of its players gets $720. Valve does not publish total Major sales, so the real figures are some multiple of these.
Timing matters too. Until the grand final, royalties follow each team’s position in Valve’s own world ranking going into the event. After the final, they follow the Major’s final standings. A team that arrives seeded 20th and lifts the trophy starts collecting the champions’ rate on every sale from that point on.
Valve also scrapped the old sticker capsules, a random pack you opened without knowing which team or player you would get. It said some players wanted to buy stickers directly, and that players in certain regions could not buy capsules at all. Stickers now cost tokens, and their prices move with demand: the more fans buy one team’s sticker, the more it costs.
If Singapore keeps the Cologne model, a deep run there pays once in prize money and again in royalties, for as long as the Major’s stickers keep selling. A first-stage exit pays very little of either.
The Major gets under way in late November. The final on December 13 settles two tables at once: the prize list, and the royalty rate each team takes from every sticker sold after the last map.
