The person making an esports tournament work might never appear on the player camera. Someone has to organise the matches, produce the broadcast and create the graphics that turn a result into a story worth following. For anyone exploring esports jobs in Australia, those roles offer a different starting point from trying to become the best player on the server.
Brendan Harms, Marketing Specialist ANZ at Logitech G, knows that route firsthand. His own involvement began with helping a talented friend build a team, then developed into paid work running it. Speaking with TechDrivePlay, he points to tournament operations, broadcasting and creative work as three areas Australians should explore.
His advice is practical: choose a skill, make something that shows you can use it and get involved with the communities already doing the work. Loving games is a useful beginning. Giving a team or organiser something useful is how that interest starts to become a career.
Why esports careers in Australia extend beyond playing
Research commissioned by Logitech G and conducted by Censuswide helps explain why the pathways need more attention. Among 162 Australian respondents aged 18–24, 75.31% agreed that professional gaming is a legitimate career. Yet only 29.01% recognised tournament or league organising as a real esports career, while 23.46% recognised commentary or shoutcasting. Team management was recognised by 32.10%.
The Australian survey included 1,500 respondents, with fieldwork conducted from 20–29 January 2026. Those figures describe attitudes within the surveyed age group, rather than the number of jobs available or the likelihood of landing one. What they reveal is a gap between accepting gaming as work and understanding the work around it.
Harms says the lingering misconception is that a gaming career simply means playing games for a living. He points instead to the people surrounding a team, including creative staff, managers, performance coaches and sports psychologists. Some pathways involve established professional qualifications; others begin with a portfolio or community experience. They should not all be treated as the same job with a different badge.
Esports jobs in Australia: three career paths
Tournament operations and event delivery
Tournament operations is about helping competition run properly. Harms identifies it as one of his three strongest starting points in Australia and highlights Melbourne-based Rekt as an example of a tournament operator to research. That is a lead for understanding the sector, rather than a claim that a particular vacancy is open.
For a beginner, a useful way to explore this work is to think through the practical needs of a small competition: registrations, a clear schedule, participant communication and accurate results. A sample tournament plan can show organisation and attention to detail before someone has a long employment history. Teams, tournament operators and community organisers are sensible places to begin looking at how those skills are used.
Esports broadcasting, commentary and hosting
Broadcasting sits alongside tournament operations in Harms’ recommendations. He has seen graduates with broadcasting and media degrees move into esports production, but also commentators begin with a much smaller setup. One friend, he says, started casting Apex from her room and went on to work as a stage host at an Apex World Championship.
That example is about developing a craft, rather than buying an impressive desk full of equipment. A budding commentator can practise explaining a match clearly, identifying important moments and making the action understandable to someone watching. A short recording gives others a way to assess that work. Harms recommends community tournaments as somewhere to get involved and improve over time.
The broader broadcast also needs people interested in production rather than presenting. For readers curious about what makes competitive play feel responsive, our guide to FPS, refresh rate and input lag explains some of the technical language that comes up around gaming setups. Understanding the game and communicating it clearly remain separate skills worth developing together.
Graphic design, social media and creative work
The third area is the creative team: graphic design, social media management and the content that helps an organisation communicate with its audience. Harms recalls recruiting designers who had already made sample banners, scorecards and victory graphics for his team. Their work showed what they could contribute more convincingly than a general expression of interest.
A compact, thoughtful portfolio can follow that approach. For example, create a set of clearly labelled concept graphics for a team you follow, with a match announcement, result card and short social post. Explain the audience and the decisions behind the work. The aim is to demonstrate relevant judgement and consistency, rather than fill a folder with unrelated designs.
How a hobby team became Brendan’s paid job
Harms realised early that professional play was unlikely to be his path. A gifted friend was having trouble finding a stable team as lower-tier rosters broke up and reformed, so they started their own. The initial effort was modest: a Twitter account and a logo they paid someone $5 to create.
The team became more community-focused and began winning. Harms eventually took it seriously enough to leave his existing job and work full-time as its Chief Operating Officer on a salary. It is a personal example of a route into the industry, rather than a blueprint promising the same result for every new team.
His broader recommendation is to begin as a hobby or side project, learning from people already involved and developing skills that could support paid work. The important progression in his story is from enjoying a game to taking responsibility for an organisation. A useful question for an aspiring applicant is what responsibility they would like to become good at handling.
What to do in your first 90 days
Asked about the first three months, Harms puts the emphasis on the role someone actually wants. A designer needs work to show. Someone interested in management needs to demonstrate transferable skills. There is little value in following a generic gaming-career checklist if it produces nothing relevant to the job.
A practical way to apply that advice is to spend the first month choosing one direction and making a small sample project. That could be a graphics set, a commentary recording or a plan for a community tournament. These are suggested exercises based on his advice, rather than a formal programme or a promise of recruitment.
In the second month, seek specific feedback and improve the work. Ask whether the graphic is readable, the commentary explains the match or the tournament schedule is realistic. During the third, put the strongest examples into a simple portfolio and approach relevant teams or organisers with a clear explanation of what you can contribute. For non-creative roles, use your CV to explain the planning, communication or team coordination you have already done.
Where to find opportunities and whether to study
Harms recommends looking up local esports teams and tournament hosts on X, then contacting them directly about community involvement. He also points to lower-tier organisations and community tournaments as places to investigate volunteer opportunities and meet people doing the work. For readers outside major cities, online research and portfolio-building are useful first steps, though the location and requirements of each opportunity still need checking.
For secondary students considering further study, he suggests investigating nearby university esports programmes and names Queensland University of Technology. QUT’s esports programme lists volunteer and paid opportunities for students in tournament administration, event delivery and broadcast production. That offers a concrete example of experience alongside study, rather than a guarantee that an esports qualification leads to employment.
Harms’ broadcasting examples also show that a specialist course is not the only starting point. A sensible approach is to compare what a course teaches with the work you want to do, and what you can already practise using your current computer. His answers do not prescribe a particular qualification or equipment budget. Upgrade or study with a specific skill gap in mind, rather than assuming more expensive hardware is the entry ticket.
Turning experience into paid work
Harms’ strongest advice on employment is to build skills that translate into gaming, rather than developing an identity so narrow that it becomes difficult to work elsewhere. He also encourages competitive players to keep studying or working and developing skills alongside competition. Creative work, organisation and communication can remain useful when a team, game or career direction changes.
Community participation can help someone learn, but it is worth being clear about an arrangement before starting. Ask what the work involves, who will supervise it, how long it lasts and whether it is paid. For freelance work, clarify the agreed deliverables, payment and use of the finished work in writing.
The Fair Work Ombudsman’s guidance on work experience and internships explains that an unpaid arrangement can be lawful where there is no employment relationship. Whether one exists depends on the circumstances. Calling something an opportunity to gain experience does not settle that question.
Start with something you can show
The useful shift is to stop treating esports as a single occupation. Someone who enjoys explaining a match may find commentary more appealing than competing. Someone who loves design may be more interested in how a team presents itself. Someone who keeps a group organised might find tournament delivery is the part they want to understand.
Harms’ experience connects those possibilities to a manageable first step: make something relevant and improve it. A polished scorecard, a clear commentary sample or a well-considered event plan gives a conversation with a team somewhere to begin. For an Australian hoping to work in gaming, that is a more useful starting point than waiting to become a professional player.
Zachary Skinner is the editor of TechDrivePlay.com, where tech, cars and adventure share the fast lane.
A former snowboarding pro and programmer, he brings both creative flair and technical know-how to his reviews. From high-performance cars to clever gadgets, he explores how innovation shapes the way we move, connect and live.
