Unveiling the Terrifying Reality Inside Women’s Esports – Brace Yourself!

At the FIFA Museum in Zurich, 24 women from all over the world have a safe space to play their favorite video game. But when they fire up their consoles at home, their experience is very different.

“I’ve dealt with people where someone has received a death threat and it’s a real threat that the police had to investigate,” says Nas Baig, founder of ECL Entertainment, an organization dedicated to providing women with more opportunities in the world of esports.

“They managed to find out who it was and his excuse was, ‘I’m really sorry, I was drunk one night. I lost to her and messaged her on Xbox. I shouldn’t have done that.’ This sort of thing happens on a regular basis.

The level of abuse is alarming and is just one of many hurdles that make it especially challenging for women who are trying to establish a career playing video games full-time.

The Athletic she’s talking to people across the industry to find out about women’s experiences in esports. Gamers and others working in the esports industry have told us that:

• Women commonly receive sexually violent threats while playing esports
• Esports is a “scary” place for women
• Men typically earn significantly more than women in professional esports
• Teams usually prefer men when assigning coaching and investment (by an esports player)

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To become a professional esports player, you have to make sacrifices. “It doesn’t mean no social life — you have to be passionate about it,” says Jennifer Lopez, 23, who represented the United States at the #FAMEHERGAME in Zurich, a bootcamp and tournament hosted by Fifa.

Designed to “increase exposure, build grassroots opportunities and create a safe space for women,” top female FIFA players from around the world were invited to learn the skills they may need to navigate esports, how to manage media and deal with online abuse. They then competed against each other.

Twenty four participants, representing different countries, competed for two fully paid trips to the Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand this summer. Some of the participants said they only play a few hours a day, but others have devoted much more time to esports success.

“I’ve played FIFA for about 550 hours in the last two months, eight to ten hours a day,” said Miss Lola, 33. “I feel like I’ve lost sleep and social interactions. I hardly leave the house. I’m alone in front of my computer screen and my console all day. But it’s something I’m very passionate about. It doesn’t even feel like work really; it’s funny to me.

Miss Lola used to be a nurse but is now pursuing a career in esports. The nickname she uses while streaming, Miss Lola, is based on a character from the 1996 Looney Tunes film Space Jam named Lola Bunny, the only female character to play basketball with the male characters in the film.

Some players in the event have been signed by professional teams, which means they receive a salary and money to invest in building their squad in Ultimate Team, the game mode in which esports players compete. To get ahead in Ultimate Team, they need FIFA Points, which can be accumulated over time by playing or purchased for real money to gain faster access to better players. Professional teams sometimes give players money to help them do that.

“In terms of initial investment, female players can get around £1,000-£1,500 ($1,300-$1,900) to start building their team, but it’s common for men to get around £5,000 in investment,” says Baig, whose mother Rashida received an MBE for tackling racial and gender inequality. She founded ECL Entertainment to try and level the playing field.

This claim was backed up by Leah Hall, 30, an esports player and broadcaster from Canada: “More organizations are signing women, which is surprising, but unfortunately many organizations are signing professional female gamers to tick a diversity box.

“I think if an organization has a professional FIFA player and a professional female FIFA player, the training, the time, the investment, the money, the majority – I would say probably 85-90% – will go to that male professional player and a lot less to the professional female player.”

Speaking of payments from esports teams, a source, an industry expert – who, as quoted in this piece, spoke on condition of anonymity to protect their professional dealings – said their experience was that professional women in esports were paid £350-£750, while men received £2,000-£10,000.

Hall used to work as a teacher and project manager, but now works full-time in esports creating content and broadcasting professional FIFA tournaments. She was most recently a broadcaster at the eChampions League Final in Istanbul in June. That final had a prize pool of $280,000, but players cannot rely on winnings for their income. Instead, they mostly make money through brand deals thanks to their large online following.

Twitch is the platform of choice for most streamers. If a member purchases a subscription to get ad-free viewing of a streamer’s content, Twitch gets 50% and the streamer gets the remaining 50%. (A rival called Kick has emerged that offers streamers 95% of the revenue.) Subscription rates range from $5 to $25 a month.

“A lot of female players can make a living out of this,” says Baig. “They can probably make anywhere between £1,500 and £3,500 a month on Twitch. The top male and female streamers are neck and neck in earnings. However, earning money from Twitch subscriptions is much less profitable than branded offers. “The income I make from casting and brand deals drives me more than Twitch,” says Hall.

Players look to build a following and then look to work with brands they want to market to that audience. This is more difficult for female players, who tend to have smaller followings. Streamscharts, a website that tracks the most popular FIFA 23 streamers each week, didn’t show any women ranked in the top 50 at the time of writing. (An October 2021 leak revealed that only three percent of Twitch’s highest-paid streamers were women.) “There aren’t as many of these branded offerings as there are for men,” Baig says.

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When women pursue a career in esports, it’s not always accepted.

“When I got selected for this, everyone was like, ‘Why wasn’t your brother selected? He’s the one he plays the most. He’s the best one,’” says Sneha Arya, 21, who represents India and is a newcomer to the international scene.

When women stream their FIFA content, they are often subjected to abuse. It’s common for women to receive sexually abusive messages, sometimes death threats, while streaming their content, according to a source who spoke to The Athletic.

“If you’re on Twitch, people will create an account and send you awful messages,” Baig says. “If you block them, they will go and create another one. We had a female player claim that one person created 15 accounts in the span of a month and kept sending awful messages. The player blocked them, but they came back and created a new one every time. There is a constant level of abuse.”

“I stream on TikTok and every day there are comments saying, ‘Go to the kitchen’,” says Lisa Manley, 24, who represents England. Manley is a full-time esports player who creates content and is a broadcaster at various esports events.

Hall has a similar experience: “There’s a lot of toxicity, bigotry, disrespect and rude comments. Some of them are nasty and mean comments and some are inappropriate and objectifying comments.

“There’s always: ‘What does a girl know about soccer?’; ‘What does a girl know about FIFA?’. Those classic things that unfortunately have become normal in our lives because this is just everyday reality.

She adds, “There are a lot of young people making comments that they may not have the same life experience and they enjoy being rude on the Internet,” says Hall. “It’s a scary space for women.”

A report from Sky Broadband and Guild eSports found that nearly half of female gamers have experienced abuse online. 80% of these messages are sexual in nature, with more than half of female gamers (52%) concerned about being abused while playing video games. Miss Lola tries not to let him take it.

“Occasionally there are trolls who say, ‘Go to the kitchen,’” he says. “But I enjoy all of this. ‘Do you go to the kitchen? Sure, do you want a ham or turkey sandwich?’ This is my answer, because if I let them get to me, I let them win. So I do my best to have fun.

“Sometimes they make you feel like you’re not good enough: ‘You shouldn’t play this game — you’re a girl, go do your makeup, go play with your hair.’ But regardless, I will.

When a player “rage out” in FIFA, it means that he leaves the game before it ends. The mere presence of a female player beating a male player, for some, is enough to trigger that response. “If I turn on the mic when I’m winning, men will literally stop because they’ll notice I’m a girl,” says US-born Lopez.

When it comes to tournaments, the FIFA eWorld Cup is considered the most prestigious FIFA esports event. The prize in 2022 was $500,000. The FIFAe Club World Cup had a prize pool of $300,000 in 2022. While at the FIFAe Nations Cup, $400,000 was on offer. These tournaments are dominated by male players.

The #FAMEHERGAME bootcamp in Zurich was the first event of its kind to specifically bring together the world’s best female FIFA players in a supportive tournament.

While there was no six-figure prize money on offer, everyone was able to compete: Germany’s Fabienne Morlock, 21, and Brazil’s Maria Cecilia Rocha Fonseca Fernandes, 17, made it to the final, which the latter won 4-1 on aggregate over two legs, in front of an audience with commentators, interviews and post-match analysis.

One of the measures FIFA introduced to combat abuse at the World Cup in Qatar was a social media protection service for players that can hide comments containing malicious words – that software was promoted in Zurich. It’s meant to fight abuse, even if it can’t stop everything. To stop abuse and make esports an equal experience for men and women, a lot needs to change.

“Why is it necessary to separate and organize a men’s tournament and a women’s tournament?” says Miss Lola. “We work to make it all-inclusive, where men and women compete with each other on an equal level.”

When asked what needs to change, his answer was simple: “Society.”

(Top photo: FIFA)