PUBG esports teams will share profits from the league

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds developer PUBG Corp. will support its burgeoning esports scene with a profit-sharing program for team and league-branded digital items. The developer will give 25 percent of all National PUBG League and PUBG European League item sales to each of the participating teams.

PUBG Corp. said it’s a way to directly support teams by offsetting operating costs, “lowering the barrier to entry” to new teams and players.

Related: The National PUBG League kicks off in early February

“We are nothing without our teams and players, so it’s critical that we develop these programs to support our competitive scene and help teams build their brands,” PUBG Corp. CMO Richard Kwon said in a statement. “In addition to building a popular esport that caters to our PUBG fanbase for years to come, we want to create a financially viable environment for players to sustain themselves and profit from their hard work.”

Further financial support is expected through additional profit-sharing opportunities for exclusive in-game items created for global events. Twenty-five percent of those sales will given to the participating teams there, on top of the regular profit-sharing program. PUBG Corp. also said that it’ll match international tournament prize pools to double the “reward opportunities” for teams. Details are expected “at a later date.”

The last phase of the profit-sharing program centers on the PUBG Global Championship. PUBG Corp. will create a special item for the event, with 25 percent of sales added to the championship prize pool. Exclusive items for each team will be created for this event, too—for each participating team and a celebratory item for the winner. It follows the same profit-sharing percentage, with 25 percent of sales going to each team.

Both the National PUBG League and the PUBG European League are expected to kick off soon. The leagues were announced in October. Since then, PUBG Corp.’s spent most of the preseason cleaning up the scene. Over a dozen players qualifying for the two leagues were issued multiple-year bans for cheating in public and league matches. In the future, players interested in joining the league will undergo background checks on all accounts before competition begins—so that PUBG Corp. won’t have to retroactively disqualify players and teams again.