Nick Kyrgios Feels Sports is All About Entertainment

A 16-year-old American made the headlines on Sunday after he received a $3 million prize money for winning the ‘Fortnite World Cup’. The prize money was under the spotlight as it equalled the prize money offered by the US Open. However, Nick Kyrgios feels that prize money depends on how much entertainment the sports generate.

Fortnite is an online video game that has about 250 million users all over the world. The Fortnite World Cup finals took place between July 26 to 28 in New York at the Arthur Ashe Stadium with a pool of $30 million prize money. The event generated around 15000 fans at the Flushing Meadows.

Norwegian tennis player, Casper Ruud took a dig at prize money being awarded to the winner of the Fortnite World Cup as he compared the prize money of the US Open with the esports competition.

He asked Vasek Pospisil, one of the 10 players on the ATP players council about the percentage of revenue that is being paid back to the participants of the Fortnite World Championships.

He wrote on Twitter, “Hey Vasek Pospisil, are you able to find out how many percentage of revenue that are given back to the players at the Fortnite world Championships? I just read that the prize money to win is about the same as winning the US Open in tennis, unreal.”

Later, Nick Kyrgios criticised Casper Ruud and replied to his tweet, “Haha bro it’s about entertainment and unfortunately, you don’t bring much.”

However, Nick Kyrgios deleted his tweet after some time, the crux of the matter was whether sports is only about entertainment?  Nick Kyrgios might feel that sports is merely a source of entertainment but it is so much more than just entertainment. It is an activity with aesthetic, emotional and ethical dimensions. Sports improve and enrich life in many ways.

Later, Vasek Pospisil also replied to Ruud and suggested that tennis still has a room for improvement in terms of revenue generation, which implied that the Fortnite World Cup did it better than tennis. He wrote, “Haha let’s just say we have room for improvement…”

Following Nick Kyrgios, Casper Ruud also deleted his tweet, who started the thread, which generated a lot of reactions on Twitter.

It was later confirmed that the $30 million prize money for the Fortnite World Cup was only 1% of their revenue of $2.4 billion in 2018. While the $53 million prize money for the US Open 2018 was 13.9% of their official revenue of $380.14 million.