Mansfield teen to play at Fortnite World Cup – where winner takes home $3 million

A Mansfield teenager could win up to $3m when he competes in a video game tournament this summer in New York City.

Jake Smith, 18, will be one of 100 players vying for the top prize at the Fortnite World Cup in July – where even coming dead last nets you $50,000.

The tournament centres around the online video game Fortnite, first released in 2017, where players compete to survive in a virtual world.

Jake first came across the game when he had to take a year out of school after being diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome.

He said: “I was really ill at school and when I was doing my GCSEs I had to do them at home.

“So when I started in the sixth-form I had to take a gap year. That was at the same time Fortnite came out so it became really easy to get into and make friends and I was getting better and better at playing it.”

This February, Jake travelled to another Fortnite tournament in Poland, where he stood in for someone who was too young to enter the contest.

It was at this tournament where Jake was spotted by the manager of a gaming company who signed him as a player on a professional contract – becoming one of a number of gamers around the world making money in what is known as e-sports.

He has no plans to go back to complete his time in sixth-form as his work in e-sports has become a full-time job.

He said: “It’s basically like a traditional football contract where I get a salary to play for this company.

“I’d always known that there was a career in e-sports but when I was younger all the games already had their very well-established professionals.

“I was coming into Fortnite at a time when it had just been released and so there weren’t any of those established players.”

Jake secured a place at the Fortnite World Cup after several weeks of qualifying rounds, where he was eventually placed in the top eight of 3,000 players in Europe.

He lives at home in Mansfield with mum Julie Smith, 42, and dad Darren Smith, 40, who will both be travelling with him to New York.

Julie, an operational manager for a charity, said: “When Jake first started getting into it I was a little bit concerned about the amount of time he was spending just sat in his bedroom.

“But because he was so ill there wasn’t really a lot else he could do so I just took the view that as long as he was happy then that was fine.

“Darren in particular was saying that I should just leave him to it because Darren has always been a gamer.