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.
