What is the average income of Go players?

[shoryuu]

EDIT: I am asking about typical Go fans, not professional players.

What do you think a typical Go player makes in a year (in US Dollars)?

I ask this question because there seems to be so little money in the game. Perhaps in the US (where I live), it is largely due to the small amount of people actively playing the game. But even in China/Korea/Japan/Taiwan, you can see evidence of a very underwhelming Go economy.

Most international championship titles have a winner's prize of $500,000 or so, similar to most Japanese titles. Domestic titles in China and Korea seems to command a smaller prize pool. Park Jung Hwan - the highest income earner in South Korea, only earned a little less than $800,000 in 2015 (prize money). Na Hyun, the 10th highest earner earned a $100,000 the same year (prize money).

Of course, relatively speaking, these are large sums of money, since they probably also get side income from endorsements, etc. But considering the fact that this is a game played by over 60,000,000 people worldwide, these numbers start to sound low.

[dfan]

I feel like a bunch of replies have misinterpreted the original post. Its thesis was that with so many fans, many of which have decent incomes, you'd expect them to spend money in such a way that there was more money available for pros. It had nothing to do with regular Go players making income from the game themselves.

[hyperpape]

dfan is right. But even if that train of thought didn't make sense, it wouldn't be a logical fallacy. "Logical fallacy" doesn't mean "any argument I disagree with". I'd recommend consulting a list of logical fallacies.

Maybe I'm being pedantic, but since citing logical fallacies acts like a bit of a trump card, it's important to be accurate about them.

[shoryuu]

dfan is right. But even if that train of thought didn't make sense, it wouldn't be a logical fallacy. "Logical fallacy" doesn't mean "any argument I disagree with". I'd recommend consulting a list of logical fallacies.

Maybe I'm being pedantic, but since citing logical fallacies acts like a bit of a trump card, it's important to be accurate about them.

Yes, if we assume that he was mistaken in his thinking then that is exactly what makes a logical fallacy. Making a judgement from using 2 subjects from 2 completely different and eternally non-intersecting fields is bloody illogical and logical fallacy. It's a no-brainer and you don't have to act smart by quoting the exact type of fallacy that it is.

Also to claim that I use it because I don't agree with would imply it's of my opinion. I'm pretty sure it's established fact that no amateur will ever pocket a single yen/yuan/won/NTD of any pro tournament ever as an amateur. It seems you are the illogical one who should take your own advice and read some "Logical Reasoning for Dummies" in addition to that.

[Knotwilg]

I agree with soryuu that the assumption made by the OP is confusing the discussion.

The question he seems to ask himself is: why do Go professionals make so little money?

But the question he asks his: what's the average income of Go players? This new question seems to assume a relationship between income of Go players, their willingness to spend money on Go related things and the income of Go pros.

There are all sorts of things wrong here:

First of all, the comparison with sports:
- football fans are known to spend a major percentage of their income on their season ticket and are being tricked into buying a new jersey every year; their willingness to spend, hence their spending, does not relate all that well to their income
- part of what they buy is "belonging to a community"; it's ridiculous (or beautiful, if you want) how people need and find this sense of belonging; the team in my home town recently changed its slogan to "we are buffalo, we are one family"; people are overcome with joy when the team wins and on the verge of a depression when they lose. I could go on ...
- another part of the enthusiasm is to be understood as "mimesis". Football fans want to be like the athlete they admire. Many of them don't play football themselves. I would even conjecture that those who do play football, spend less money on club jerseys and season tickets

Compare this to go *players*: they don't spend money on watching go and neither do they belong to a community at the emotional level we find in football fans. Are there any fans who don't play go themselves? Hardly. So the comparison is off, by a long distance.

Secondly, the money in a certain field is rarely generated directly from the fans or followers. More likely, the activity is featured in media and sponsored by parties that expect revenue from being noticed, or being associated to the activity. In football we see many people are attracted to the sport, who want to spend relatively a lot of money. In Golf, we see fewer people attracted to the sport, but they're usually rich and even if they spend relatively little, it's still a lot in absolute terms.

Lastly, I want to come back to the question of identification. I bought the books by Lee Sedol because I can relate to this somewhat mystic figure, with his long, uncomnbed hair, his rebellious nature, his fighting style ... There are few people capable of catching my drift this way. Certainly not Ke Jie, or any of the Parks, or whichever new Chinese or Korean new kid on the block. It was different at the time of Kato the Killer, Cho the small life maker or Takemiya with the cosmic style. Not to mention Go Seigen. Even with all its limitations of not being an athletic sport and being quite nerdy in nature, Go still has potential. It doesn't help that the scene is dominated by studious, quiet, university student types, all of whom play a similar style.

When I see a football game, even if I can't do what Messi does, I know what he does and I'm able to admire him. When I see a go game, I can only delude myself into appreciating what's going on. Later, a strong amateur or pro will explain me what has really happened. It's very difficult to be as excited "live" in Go as in football.

In my opinion, Go is just too difficult to make crowds enthusiastic about what's going on and this is the explanation why Go pros are not making big money.

[Uberdude]

Knotwilg, you make a lot of good points in comparing Go to football and how that affects the wealth of the professional scene, but I don't follow soryuu's point that you agree with (dfan/hyperpape make sense to me). So to be clear:

- OP asks about income of Go players and says there's ~60 million of them, so why isn't pro scene richer.
- Various people talk about the ways money can flow from fans to pros (and related organisations):
- - there's direct flows for teaching (e.g. amateur golfers/tennis players paying low-pros for lessons, not so much with football as most football fans don't play)
- - subscriptions to related media/events, e.g. badukTV for Go player, your football fan with his TV package (and season ticket)
- - sponsorship of tournaments from companies, this is mostly about number of fans rather than their wealth, but some link as mentioned about golf fans being rich so nice audience for luxury goods companies
- - endorsements/adverts by the celebrity players

Then soryuu says

I find it very odd that you can mix up professional tournament prize winnings with the total number of Go players in the world. That 60 million figure you quoted do not have access to even have a chance to win the prize money so that's a huge logical fallacy. The prize winnings for amateurs are so low that you would have to win a tournament with couple thousand dollars prize money every month to have a comparable income to a basic job. Also you would probably have to fly around a lot so you are already losing money before you started a tournament.

So because the 60 million Go fans won't win pro tournaments there's a logical fallacy? Where? The size of the fan-base is relevant to the pro scene for reasons above. That your average couch-potato football fan has no chance of winning the Premier League doesn't stop him paying £50/month for his Sky TV, watching adverts, noticing sponsors and so on, so why should a Go fan having no chance of winning the Ing cup stop him seeing adverts, buying a mattress from MLily, paying his local pro for a lesson and so on? (Note I agree watching Go is less fun for most than watching football and the other reasons so it will be much smaller, but disagree with the "fans can't win pro tournament so number is irrelevant to pro scene wealth" argument that seems to have been made.)

P.S. Another factor that I think is quite important for smaller activities like Go is the presence of Go fans in positions of power/influence in potential sponsors, media companies etc. So for Go we got the Lee Sedol vs Gu Li match because Mr Ni, the boss of MLily (a Chinese mattress company) is a big Go fan so stepped up to sponsor it. Go's success in Thailand (loads of players, but not pros) is largely down to the support of Mr Korsak, a successful businessman (CEO of the Thai 7-11 convenience store franchise among other things). The continued high support of Japanese pro titles is I believe in part down to plenty of the old men bosses at newspapers or other companies being Go fans, or at least thinking it is a valuable part of their culture worth preserving even if it is not a great commercial decision. So if more people are Go fans the small chance of some random CEO being a Go fan and being in a position to support the pro scene also increases.

[John Fairbairn]

Another factor that I think is quite important for smaller activities like Go is the presence of Go fans in positions of power/influence in potential sponsors, media companies etc.

An excellent point, and I would go further and say it is very important. But are we approaching a cliff edge? World titles such as Toyota and Fujitsu and many other tournaments have benefited from CEOs with a personal interest (sometimes indirect) in go but when the relevant person dies, company priorities change and sponsorship drops off if the new CEO doesn't play go and wield personal power - shareholders are now more assertive. Politicians with influence are perhaps more important (the signal example at the moment is General Li Jianchao in China, a former eminence grise in the Politburo). But they die or can fall out of power. Do modern politicians play go? Top bureaucrats have been a major if often overlooked influence in Japan, and less so in Korea. But they retire, and I'm not sure they get replaced by go players nowadays.

I suspect go sponsorship will become much more fractured in future and follow the chess pattern. Pros may still be able to cross the canyon to a high income but via a high-wire rather than a canter across a bridge.

And in those future days, middle-echelon PR and advertising men analysing disposable incomes and spending patterns will probably exert the power of today's upper echelons.

[dfan]

Another factor that I think is quite important for smaller activities like Go is the presence of Go fans in positions of power/influence in potential sponsors, media companies etc.

An excellent point, and I would go further and say it is very important.

Indeed. The resurgence of world-class chess (and money for it) in the United States in the last ten years is largely due to one man, Rex Sinquefield. (Whether or not this is a healthy situation is another question.)

[Knotwilg]

That your average couch-potato football fan has no chance of winning the Premier League doesn't stop him paying £50/month for his Sky TV, watching adverts, noticing sponsors and so on, so why should a Go fan having no chance of winning the Ing cup stop him seeing adverts, buying a mattress from MLily, paying his local pro for a lesson and so on? (Note I agree watching Go is less fun for most than watching football and the other reasons so it will be much smaller, but disagree with the "fans can't win pro tournament so number is irrelevant to pro scene wealth" argument that seems to have been made.)

There IS a logically fallacy, now that you've eloquently revealed the structure of the discussion before my very eyes, and it's in soryuu's reasoning. Thanks and apologies.

P.S. Another factor that I think is quite important for smaller activities like Go is the presence of Go fans in positions of power/influence in potential sponsors, media companies etc. So for Go we got the Lee Sedol vs Gu Li match because Mr Ni, the boss of MLily (a Chinese mattress company) is a big Go fan so stepped up to sponsor it. Go's success in Thailand (loads of players, but not pros) is largely down to the support of Mr Korsak, a successful businessman (CEO of the Thai 7-11 convenience store franchise among other things). The continued high support of Japanese pro titles is I believe in part down to plenty of the old men bosses at newspapers or other companies being Go fans, or at least thinking it is a valuable part of their culture worth preserving even if it is not a great commercial decision. So if more people are Go fans the small chance of some random CEO being a Go fan and being in a position to support the pro scene also increases.

Good point too. We indeed see a lot of rich-would-have-been-pele-business-men taking over football clubs, not always to the benefit of the club though, I must say