Recently, Riot Games announced a statistic on the prize money that League of Legends players have earned throughout their careers. And it’s no surprise that the familiar name at the top remains: Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok.
The Demon King is also the only player to have a prize money total exceeding 1 million USD, specifically 1.256 million USD. This amount only accounts for the prize money from professional League of Legends tournaments, excluding salary, advertising income, or streaming revenue.
With 9 LCK championships, 2 MSI championships, and 3 World Championships… it’s hardly surprising that Faker holds the highest prize money in professional League of Legends.
What’s even more noteworthy is that since winning the World Championship in 2016, the players from that SKT lineup have continued to achieve more glory, even though some of them no longer wear the same jersey. Bengi, despite retiring early, remains in the top 5 players who have earned the most from tournaments, with over 810 thousand USD in prize money from 3 World Championship cups, 1 MSI, and numerous domestic titles.
Faker, Duke, Bang, and Wolf continued to find success after 2016. The trio from SKT added another LCK Spring Championship and an MSI title in 2017.
Specifically, after the failure at the 2017 World Championship and a disastrous 2018, Faker made a strong comeback by winning the last 3 LCK championships. As for Duke, this top laner undoubtedly achieved the largest success after leaving SKT.
Duke became the first and only player in the world to win the League of Legends World Championship in two different jerseys: SKT T1 in 2016 and Invictus Gaming in 2018. With this achievement, he even ranks second in this prize money list, only behind his former teammate Faker (as championship prize money has increased over time, it’s understandable that Duke’s earnings surpass those of Bengi, Bang, or Wolf).
In the top 10, SKT occupies 6 positions, while the other 4 names belong to Rookie, JackeyLove, Ning (Invictus Gaming), and Ambition (Samsung Galaxy). Just looking at these statistics shows the significant gap in achievements between SKT players and the rest; because apart from Duke, Faker, Bengi, Bang, Wolf, and Blank have not won any international titles since MSI 2017, yet their previous championship streak has been sufficient to widen the gap in prize money earned compared to other prominent stars.
