While prize money continues to climb, esports has yet to offer its stars the lucrative payouts that those in more traditional sports enjoy. However, the Nadeshot net worth is a great example of how competitive gaming can provide players with life-changing sums of money.
Combining tournament prize money with YouTube and Twitch ad revenue, as well as merchandise sales, Matthew “Nadeshot” Haag made the most of his six years as a professional Call of Duty player.
Having since invested his earnings in his own esports organisation, the riches will continue to come for the American star.
Who is Nadeshot?
Nadeshot is a big name in the world of esports, having spent six years as one of the stars of professional Call of Duty.
Haag spent time working in McDonald’s before esports gave him his big break. However, first he had to work his way up through the amateur ranks in Halo and Gears of War before making his professional debut in Call of Duty at the age of 16.
After a year with CoD organisation Genesis, Nadeshot joined the big leagues with OpTic Gaming in 2010. It is here where he would earn his place among esport’s elite.
Nadeshot initially struggled to displace OpTic’s starting players, but he got his chance at the 2011 Call of Duty XP and was able to take it, along with the trophy and a $100,000 prize.
The organisation stuck with Nadeshot in the following Black Ops II season. OpTic produced good results throughout the year, including a third place finish at the Call of Duty Championships.
Numerous roster changes threw Nadeshot into the captain position in the following season. Under his leadership, OpTic qualified for the $1m Call of Duty championship. The team eventually finished third, taking home $120,000 of the prize pool.
Nadeshot picked up The Game Awards’ eSports Player of the Year award for his feats.
OpTic started the following season strongly, finishing second at MLG Columbus followed by a victory UMG Orlando. The team went on to top the MLG leaderboard.
However, Nadeshot announced that he would be stepping down to become a full-time content creator at the end of the season.
Introducing 100 Thieves
Nadeshot was unable to stay away from the competitive scene for too long. After about a year out, he announced that he was creating his own organisation.
Known as 100 Thieves, the team started out in competitive Call of Duty. It has since branched out into League of Legends and Overwatch among other titles.
Speaking to Esports Insider, Nadeshot said:
“Every day I was trying to cook up a video idea that I necessarily just wasn’t passionate about,
“I was trying to figure out what was missing and I figured out that I wanted to work on something bigger with people working with me every single day, with us working towards one collective goal.
“There wasn’t one instance in where I thought to myself ‘I want to be an owner of a team’ but now, this is like my new baby. 100 Thieves is the culmination of my life’s work honestly.”
Despite its relatively short history, 100 Thieves is already one of the most popular and successful organisations in the competitive gaming scene.
Does it pay? How much has Nadeshot made?
Unfortunately for Nadeshot, he called time on his professional career before esports hit its recent peak. Subsequently, despite his status as one of the best in the CoD competitive scene, he didn’t make the seven figure sums that some pros are currently making.
According to prize pool tracker Esports Earnings, Nadeshot made $205,000 between 2011 and 2015.
His breakthrough year came in 2011, when his tournament winnings climbed from $500 in 2010 to $103,000 in 2011. That was a result of winning the CoD XP with OpTic Gaming, which came with a $100,000 prize.
Aside from tournament earnings, Nadeshot also has a highly-engaged social media following. His YouTube channel currently boasts more than 3.1m subscribers. He also has 900,000 followers on video game streaming platform Twitch.
This undoubtedly pays well for the former OpTic man. According to social media tracking tool SocialBlade, Nadeshot has received 41.6m views on Twitch since he started streaming. With the platform paying between $2-$10 per 1,000 ad views, Nadeshot’s total career Twitch earnings are probably somewhere between $83,200 and $416,000.
However, many streamers boast of making five figure sums each month from Twitch through the donation system. It’s impossible to say how much Nadeshot has made this way, but it is likely that he’s had a few of those month himself.
Of course, much of Nadeshot’s career has been spent away from Twitch. The former Call of Duty star signed an exclusive streaming agreement with Activision Blizzard-owned streaming platform MLG in 2014. While financial details were kept confidential, the New York Times previously described the deal as “lucrative”.
Likewise, his 3.1m YouTube followers have likely earned him somewhere between $1.45m and $1.93m. YouTube pays $3 to $4 on average per 1,000 ad views. Nadeshot has received approximately 483m video views according to SocialBlade.
His second channel, Nadeshotplays, boasts close to 1m followers and has received 103m video views. By our calculations, that channel will have brought in another $309,000 to $412,000.
Of course, the amount that these platform pays to each of its partners varies greatly, so take these numbers with a pinch of salt.
100 Thieves
Of course, some of Haag’s earnings will have been spent on developing 100 Thieves.
Yet, for the most part, his venture has been funded by high-profile investors like Dan Gilbert, the owner of NBA basketball side the Cleveland Cavaliers. Gilbert’s multi-million dollar investment has helped the organisation to establish sides in competitive League of Legends and Overwatch.
According to Esports Earnings, the organisation has only made $54,000 so far in tournament winnings, but that isn’t to say that 100T isn’t proving to be a lucrative investment for Haag and Gilbert.
The organisation undoubtedly makes a fair amount from merchandise sales. When the 100 Thieves store was first stocked in September 2017, many items sold out in less than 10 minutes, highlighting just how popular the organisation became in such a short space of time.
Nadeshot net worth
It’s impossible to say exactly how much Nadeshot is worth. It is clear that esports has been kind to the former OpTic Gaming captain.
It’s difficult to calculate exactly how much he has earned from streaming, or whether his investment in 100 Thieves is paying off. However, the figures below provide some idea of the current Nadeshot net worth and how much he has earned so far.
Nadeshot is thought to have earned around $205,000 from competing in tournaments. However, his social media followings have likely generated the bulk of his wealth.
By our calculations, YouTube and Twitch have made the CoD star somewhere between $2.15m and $3.17m.
Merchandise sales likely added a fair bit more to the total.
We cannot say exactly how much the player has made so far from his time in esports. However, Final Kill estimates the Nadeshot net worth at around $3m.
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