Many big names in esports are not doing so well these days. We talk in the past tense about others. It would be very easy to put various failures of teams, websites and tournaments down to the infertility of esports. Esports is bad, it is business suicide, Ninjas in Pyjamas and the World Series of Video Games would say.

But if this is so, how come companies like SK Gaming, Meet Your Makers and ESL are not dying with them? Why are yesterday's kings today's paupers?

The answer is terrifyingly simple. Esports is full of businessmen that know business but do not know gaming and gamers that know gaming but do not know business. The early brands in competitive gaming were built by people who had the good fortune of being in the right place at the right time.

But winning on the lottery is only the first step. You need to be able to sustain the symbiosis between gaming and business and convert the success in one area into success in another.

For a gaming team, winning tournaments is simply not enough. It is a painful truth known to many former royalties. Getting first place is just two extra minutes of photographs on a podium that convert into twenty photos on a dozen of websites. If twenty photos is the best you can offer your sponsors, then get ready to start enjoying your pauperage.

From 2001 onwards, Fatal1ty won one international event a year on average, won nothing in 2003 and 2006 and has never managed to qualify for the World Cyber Games. According to rumours, he has recently bought a $2,500,000 house in Los Angeles. That is some food for thought.

If you are an event organiser, getting a million dollars from a wealthy sponsor is not enough either. You need to know which horse to bet it on. You need to know how to build a sustainable sporting structure instead of spending money on photos of zeroes on prize cheques on websites.

How many organisations have you seen blow budgets on things they could not afford? Blinded, events fought purse wars and teams entered bidding races for players instead of waiting for everyone else to commit this business suicide. And win, because you are the only one left.

While some companies put almost everything they had into prize money for years, ESL waited and invested into infrastructure. Guess who gave out the largest amount of prize money in Warcraft 3 and Counter-Strike tournaments in 2007?

Bad ideas, bad business models, short-sightedness and not knowing the meaning of "slowly but surely" are the failures of the first generation of esports entrepreneurs. The lucky ones that found themselves at the right place at the right time.

Time has verified what they were really worth. Only the fittest have survived. The wisest of paupers will be kings soon.