Culture

Levelling up: How Esports turned a hobby into a money-making machine

The Age Nell Geraets

28 Sept 2026 11:00 AEST Summary

From the report

For a long time, playing video games was considered nothing but a pastime. Now, it’s some Australians’ full-time job – and they’re making oodles from it.

**Not from this story.** A library photograph of concert hall auditorium, used to illustrate it. LA Disney Concert Hall auditorium Photo: Andreas Praefcke / wikimedia, CC BY

**Not from this story.** A library photograph of concert hall auditorium, used to illustrate it. LA Disney Concert Hall auditorium Photo: Andreas Praefcke / wikimedia, CC BY

This is a summary. The indicators are not. The scores were measured over this summary alone, which is less of the article than we would like and makes them less certain.

Indicators

Niral Score 8.6 mundaneloaded

Highlighted in the text. Words that carry a fact and quoted words are not counted.

No word appears twice.

Sourcing 28 unattributednamed sources Mood 50 sorrowjoyful

6 read zero: sentiment, political diction, generational, gender, jingoistic, religious

Sentiment 0 hostilefavourable Political diction 0 left-codedright-coded Generational 0 harder on the oldharder on the young Gender 0 no gendered framingframing throughout Jingoistic 0 reports to a readerwrites from a camp Religious 0 not invokedovert

Measurements of how this article is written, not of whether it is correct. How each one is measured.

Measured on The Age’s report as filed, which is all we may publish of this one.

How this outlet filed it, and how we rewrote it

No other newsroom we read has filed on this event, so there is nothing to compare it with yet.

Also covered by The Sydney Morning Herald, WAtoday, Brisbane Times. We hold only their summary of it, not the report, so there is nothing of theirs to measure here.

Outlet	Niral Score
The Ageas they published this story	8.6

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The same event elsewhere

3 other outlets filed this story. The scoreboard above is what they did differently.

The Sydney Morning Herald Levelling up: How Esports turned a hobby into a money-making machine Niral 8.6 political 0 WAtoday Levelling up: How Esports turned a hobby into a money-making machine Niral 8.6 political 0 Brisbane Times Levelling up: How Esports turned a hobby into a money-making machine Niral 8.6 political 0