r/esports: rules, karma requirements and posting culture

Who posts here

People who work in broadcast, team operations and event production post next to fans, students and teenagers who want to go pro. Industry threads assume you know the major leagues, publishers and organisations. Beginner questions are allowed in principle, and the sidebar tells regulars to drop the elitism, but anything the FAQ already covers is removable and basic questions usually get one or two short replies.

• Fans who follow the scene across several games and care about the organisations behind the teams.
• People working in esports: broadcast and production staff, team and tournament operators, journalists.
• Students and volunteers running school, university and community programmes.
• Aspiring players, coaches and job seekers asking how to get in.
• Small tournament organisers and startup founders building platforms for the scene.

Karma and account requirements

What it takes to get a post through in r/esports.

What you can post

What happens to a new post

Where the most recent posts ended up. Sample size: 400.

• Stayed up77%
• Removed by Reddit's filters9%
• Held by AutoModerator13%
• Removed by moderators<1%
• Deleted by the author1%

Reddit counts a removal by the subreddit's own AutoModerator rules as a moderator removal, so that share is not all human. Held by AutoModerator means the post is waiting in the mod queue.

What happened when we posted here

We have posted here ourselves. This is how our own posts and comments fared.

Stayed up

90%

Removed by Reddit's filters

0%

Removed by moderators

10%

Period

January 2026 to July 2026

The rules, in the mods' words

1. 1

   No surveys and school/research projects.

   Surveys and school/research projects are not allowed.

2. 2

   No raffles or giveaways

   Raffles and other giveaways are not allowed.

3. 3

   Posts must be relevant to esports

   This subreddit is an open environment for discussing the business and industry of esports. * Content pertaining to gameplay, game updates/patches, highlights etc. should go in that respective game's subreddit instead. * Game-specific updates in the context of why they are important or relevant to the general industry are acceptable.

4. 4

   Information required for job postings

   Job posts must include details about the company/position and MUST clearly state whether they are paid positions or volunteer. * Volunteer positions need to be positions that are designed for volunteers. If you're asking for a volunteer CEO of your company, or demanding expert knowledge of advanced software, pay your damn staff and don't advertise it as a free position here. Posts like that will be removed.

5. 5

   No crypto/NFT posts.

   No crypto or NFT posts.

6. 6

   Seeking Tournament Participants

   No posts self-promoting tournaments seeking participants. Posts would be better off in the subreddits for those games.

7. 7

   FAQ

   Frequently asked questions with answers found in the FAQ or by using search will be removed.

8. 8

   Looking for Players/Teams

   No orgs searching for teams/players. No teams looking for orgs/players. If you are looking for players/teams, you'll have much better luck in the subreddit for those games.

9. 9

   Looking for Job

   No posting about how you are looking for a position. There's plenty of job websites you can look up, or advertise yourself on twitter.

These are the rules as archived in January 2025. Rules change. Check the sidebar before you post.

The culture

r/esports has about 340,000 members and a slow feed, around six posts a day. It is one of the few places on Reddit that treats competitive gaming as an industry and not as one game. About half of posts are text, a quarter are links to news, and the rest are images and a little video.

It is quiet. The median post gets two comments, and many get none. The posts that wake the room up are about money and survival: a long-running organisation closing down, a betting ban that threatens sponsorship income, viewership records, a professional player alleging that a charity donation was never paid. When a thread like that takes off, people who work in the field show up with detailed answers.

The rulebook is long and specific, and enforcement is lighter than it reads. The rules ban tournament promotion, team and player searches, and fundraising, yet posts doing each of those stayed up in our sample. They also got almost no response. The 13% of posts held by AutoModerator fits the 72 hour rule for new accounts.

What lands

• Industry news with consequences, such as a well-known organisation shutting down after more than two decades. That was the top post in the sample, with 70 comments.
• Viewership and audience numbers for major events, shared as a link or image.
• A question that invites insider answers, like why broadcast quality has gone backwards. People from production answered with cost detail.
• Practical guides from experience, such as how to organise a LAN event.
• Open questions to fans: why you support a team, or what you miss about older competitive sites.

What gets removed or ignored

• Posts from accounts under 72 hours old. These are held automatically, and they are most of what gets stopped.
• Questions the FAQ already answers, including asking which game to play. The submit page warns these will be removed.
• By the rules: surveys and school projects, raffles and giveaways, crypto and NFT posts.
• By the rules: tournaments looking for participants, organisations looking for teams or players, and people looking for a position. In practice some of these stay up and get ignored.

The unwritten rules

• Talk about the business, not the match. Scores, plays and patch notes belong in the game's own subreddit.
• Add the flair yourself right after posting. The sidebar says it twice.
• A link post needs a real story behind it. News about organisations, sponsors and leagues gets discussed. Promotional links do not.
• If you are building a product for the scene, ask a real industry question, such as how publisher rights work for a paid tool. That kind of thread got useful replies.
• Low engagement is normal. A handful of comments is a good result here.

Self-promotion

The rules are clear on the common cases: no promoting a tournament that needs participants, no recruiting for a team or organisation, no posts looking for a position, no giveaways, no surveys, no crypto. Job listings are welcome if they say paid or volunteer, and there are flairs for both. In practice the moderators are not fast, and posts pitching tournament platforms or seeking players do stay up, but nobody replies to them. A brand with something to say about the industry, such as data, a production lesson or a point of view on how organisations make money, fits the room. A brand with something to sell does not.

How people write here

Typical post length

88 words

Typical title length

11 words

Titles phrased as a question

27%

Typical comment length

28 words

Comments that include a link

1%

Posts that carry a flair

100%

The regulars

The accounts that showed up most in our sample. Worth reading before you post: they set the tone, and they are usually the first to reply.

Top keywords

The words and phrases that show up far more often here than in other communities, from recent posts in r/esports.

• esports 136 posts
• tournament 59 posts
• player 64 posts
• players 62 posts
• tournaments 40 posts
• valorant 30 posts
• league 44 posts
• games 46 posts
• esport 16 posts
• game 52 posts
• pubg 13 posts
• cs2 28 posts
• competitive 30 posts
• gaming 28 posts
• team 58 posts
• rocket league 13 posts
• dota 15 posts
• legends 17 posts
• bgmi 12 posts
• match 32 posts
• ewc 11 posts
• teams 37 posts
• scrims 9 posts
• prize 14 posts
• organizers 11 posts
• community 35 posts
• esports world 8 posts
• e-sports 8 posts
• discord 22 posts
• compete 16 posts
• scene 18 posts
• matches 19 posts
• esports team 7 posts
• esports history 7 posts
• fortnite 9 posts
• finals 9 posts
• pro 24 posts
• prize pool 7 posts
• scrim 6 posts
• rainbow six 6 posts

Recurring topics: esports, team, tournament, gaming, cs2, looking for, tournaments, teams, betting, looking for a.

Posts that did well

• Complexity shutting down after 23 years is a warning for esports teams stuck in a niche.239 upvotes · 70 comments · News
• The Rocket League World Championship had a peak viewership of 704 000, a record for the game74 upvotes · 12 comments · News
• Veteran Vietnamese PUBG Player LongK Speaks Out Over PUBG’s Unfulfilled $100,000 Charity Donation25 upvotes · 6 comments · News
• Brazil’s betting ban puts sponsorship revenue for CS2 teams and broadcasts at risk18 upvotes · 2 comments · News
• How to organize a LAN esports tournament (things people usually learn the hard way)18 upvotes · 4 comments · News

Growth

1. 20123.4k
2. 20135k
3. 20147.9k
4. 201512k
5. 201616k
6. 201722k
7. 201834k
8. 201953k
9. 202071k
10. 202182k
11. 2023158k
12. 2024300k
13. 2025332k
14. 2026342k

Related subreddits

• r/GlobalOffensive
• r/ValorantCompetitive
• r/esports_de
• r/csgo
• r/youtubestartups
• r/RocketLeagueEsports
• r/GetMoreViewsYT
• r/gadgets
• r/SteamDeck
• r/AdvertiseYourVideos

Common questions