OnBuy Proves that Mobile Payments Work Both Ways With Mobile Gaming Study

The next time you’re inclined to tell your kid to stop playing games on his or her phone and focus on their homework instead, you may want to reconsider. A study our friends at OnBuy sent our way reveals that mobile gaming can be a surprisingly lucrative pastime, among other things.

The lead discovery is that the most successful mobile gamer in the US, Brian Dragatto, pulled down $290,000 in one year from mobile gaming. That’s approximately five times the average salary of a person in the United States. 

Now, that sounds exactly like what a kid who wants to play some more Fortnite would cite, but the results get more interesting from there. Randy Pfahl, the second most successful mobile gamer, pulls down $125,000 a year, which is around double the average earner in the US would pull. 

The numbers decline from there; the number three player, Music Master, takes $90,000; the number four player, Jeff Derrenberger, takes $80,000, and the fifth player, Zachary Thornton, takes just $50,000, or a little less than the average. 

For competitive mobile gaming, the biggest game in town right now is Turbo Racing League, which accounts for four of the top five players—Music Master plays Clash Royale instead—and six of the top 10. Clash Royale accounts for numbers three and 10 in ranking, while Vainglory chips in the eighth and ninth-ranked players, who together are separated by $14.66.

Parents out there, you may now rest assured that you have a counter to use against your kids’ seemingly well-reasoned argument that you can be a professional mobile gamer. While indeed, the top rank suggests that there’s good money to be had, and that mobile payments do work the other way, it doesn’t take long before the cash winnings fall off into levels more fitting to, say, a first-year teacher in a rural area. Once you get out of that top ten, you’re more likely to find earnings down around the “it might pay for my trip to TwitchCon if I double up in the room” level.

Still, there is money to be made with your mobile devices, just as assuredly as there is money to be spent from that same platform. Gaming, however, isn’t likely to be the way to do it.