North American Counter-Strike hit a serious milestone following ESL One New York.

According to Esports Earnings, the total winnings of American players in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has eclipsed that of Sweden. This places the United States second overall in CSGO earnings, behind only Denmark.

As of this writing, the United States sits at $9,249,654, while Sweden trails by a narrow margin at $9,171,578. While there may be some jockeying for this position in the short-term, this highlights a shift in the pro CSGO scene that has played out over the course of several years.



Fnatic, Ninjas in Pyjamas were early champions in CSGO


In the early years of CSGO, Sweden dominated the game. Ninjas in Pyjamas and Fnatic were often considered the undisputed best teams in the game at the time, while other organizations like SK Gaming and LGB Esports fielded Swedish rosters to good effect.

That dominance was highlighted time and again at the early CSGO majors. Each of the first six majors had at least one all-Swedish CSGO team in the grand finals. Three of those saw Swedish teams go head-to-head with each other for the championship.

That success wasn’t limited to majors, either. DreamHack, Intel Extreme Masters, and ESL One events around this time were stomping grounds for Fnatic and Ninjas in Pyjamas, establishing Sweden as the premier country for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

That didn’t hold up over time, though. While Sweden is still a hotbed of talent and organizations like NiP and Fnatic remain capable of winning trophies and are competitive to this day with Swedish rosters, other countries stepped up as time went on. Teams from France, Poland, and Brazil proved to be the equals of Sweden’s best as mixed nationality teams also became more common.

Though the heydays of NiP and Fnatic are arguably among the best in the history of Counter-Strike, they also came at a lesslucrative time for the game. The richest tournaments at the time boasted prize pools of just $250,000 and there were no other organizers like ELEAGUE or WESG throwing around greater sums of cash.

This made those prime years considerably less rich than today, though it can also be argued that there was less competition at the top of the game to dispute NiP, Fnatic, and their peers.