Introduction
We are in a middle of a crypto bear market, many crypto games are gone, but Splinterlands continues to release new game features every single week since 2018. Right now the SPS token is about 20% off it's all time lows set in August 2024.
So right now is definitely not the best time to brag about how much the SPS token earnings are worth, and yet it is probably a good time to accumulate the SPS tokens, so let's see how much do Splinterlands players earn playing the game every month.
Modern vs. Wild League
There are two ranked leagues in Splinterlands: Modern League and Wild League. Modern league is where only modern cards are playable and automated bot play is not allowed. You also have to have twice more SPS tokens staked or delegated to you to earn the same reward shares in Wild compared to Modern.
An average player in Modern League earns about 15 SPS per win and has a fifty percent win rate, though these numbers change depending on various bonuses, the image above is from one of my recent modern league battles in Modern.
If we look at my last season SPS earnings we will see what the average Splinterlands player can expect to earn in the Modern league playing in Diamond modern. Here is the summary of my battles last season:
As you can see I have won 189 battles in Modern league and 49 battles in Wild earning 2907.977 SPS in Modern and 317.157 SPS in Wild for the total of 3225 SPS for ranked battles. At the current price of SPS token of: $0.00514 that is only $16.58 per season or $33.16 per month.
But what does the Splinterlands player playing just in a Wild league is earning?
Here is what a typical average player of the same level as me is looking like win win / loose wise:
| Statistic |  Wild |
|---|---|
| Battles | 410 |
| Rank | 447 |
| Rating | 3740 - CHAMPION_III |
| Rating High | 3980 |
| Win PCT (Wins/battles * 100) | 49.27 (202/410) |
| Longest Streak | 6 |
So the win rate is typically slightly higher and the rating achieved is also usually a bit higher as bots are better at playing than I am. The SPS earnings in Wild are significantly lower though and are around 5.43 SPS per win on average.
| Earnings | # |
|---|---|
| SPS ranked battle (wild) |  1095.825 |
This means that earnings per month are about 2,191.65 SPS or $11.27 per month or about three times lower than in Modern league.
Top Player Earnings
When it comes to the winnings in the game, the SPS winnings are not distributed evenly. Lets take a look at the top player earnings in the game starting with the Wild League.
Number one on the Wild League leaderboard is Vugtis who played an incredible amount of battles last season of 1301, that means he was probably using glint tokens to buy extra energy to enable his bot to play that many battles.
Out of those battles he won 63% of them or 828 battles. If we look at the image below we will see that Vugtis is burning SPS for Glint. But we can also see how much he would have earned if he was not burning SPS for Glint.
What we see here is that he is now at a rating of 8560 which is significantly lower than the rating at the end of last season of 11220 so I would say that current earnings of 42 to 52 SPS probably represent average earnings per battle for him during the season.
So we take 828 wins and multiply those by 50 SPS tokens per win and we get: 41,400 SPS tokens per season or $212.80 per season or $425 per month. Not a bad number, but how does that compare to the Modern SPS earnings of the top players?
As we see the earnings per battle of the top Modern players are around twice those in Wild and that is explained by the fact that in Modern it is harder to achieve a high rating that really increases SPS earnings.
We see that HouseWifeFTW achieved about half the rating in Modern compared to what Vugtis achieved in Wild:
So at 634 wins in Modern last season Housewife made around 63,400 SPS tokens in Modern Ranked game play or around $326 per season or $652 dollars per month.
Conclusion
Average Splinterlands player makes around $33 dollars per month in Modern league and around $11 dollars per month in Wild league. This compares to significantly higher earnings in both Wild and Modern league for the top players at $425 and $652 per month respectively.
To be a top Splinterlands player in Modern or Wild does require a significantly higher investment into the game, but that would be a subject of my future post that would look into what the rate of return at various levels might be.
And finally we are close to the bottom of the SPS token, these earnings can easily double if SPS token was to jump up to one cent during the next major card set release and imagine what would these earnings be if we were to reach close to an all time high for SPS...