You may shake your head at those who spend all their time gaming - but they could be on to the biggest business opportunity of their lives.

Epic, the company which owns the world's most popular on-line competitive game, Fortnite Battle Royale, has just made it "the biggest eSport in the world" by offering prizes money of £74million.

The money will be available over a year and dwarfs the a £28million pot put up for grabs last year for players of Valve's Dota 2 game.

Epic's headline-grabbing decision has also made those with the skills to succeed in the game hot property - with many gamers now hiring their superiors to teach them and potentially putting them on the road to riches.

Some players are understood to be charging £30 an hour for their services.

In terms of getting your hands on the £74million, there is one stumbling block, bluntly pointed out by Gamebreakingnews.net.

"What will you have to do to get your hands on a slice of this enormous pie? Well, that's not clear yet," said the website.

All Epic has said is that it will release "more details" int eh coming weeks.

It has said it will go out of its way to make its competitions as "inclusive" as possible and is an effort to tackle previous on-line competitions which marred by allegations of racism, sexism, bullying.

Young players of Fortnite with drams of turning professional recently received a boost when it was revealed that a 13-year-old had just become the youngest ever player to turn professional.

Member of Team Secret Fortnite, schoolboy, Kyle Jackson, was unmasked and became national news - as well as the envy of thousands of other school children world-wide.

As part of the successful team Kyle is able to pocket his share of prize money from on-line tournaments.

Epic released Fortnite in July 2017. It is described as a "co-operative survival shooting game" where players can build structures to protect themselves from materials they scavenge in the game.

One of the most popular formats in Battle Royale mode which sees 100 players fight it out against one another, some working together as small teams.

What helped make it so popular is the game is free and can now be played on a variety of machines, including Xbox One, PlayStation 4, as well as PC and Mac.

Concerns have been expressed about hackers accessing gamers accounts and young gamers not knowing the ages of those they team up with on-line.