The Pakistani gamer who turned down scholarships for PUBG

From cricket to DOTA to PUBG: a career built on switching

The episode opens with Muzamil asking his guest the most basic question: what do you do? The answer takes a moment to land. “I am a professional esports athlete,” says Temour Ali Khan — known publicly as Khan PUBG. He is careful to draw the distinction: in casual conversation, people say “gamer.” In professional terms, the correct word is “athlete.”

What follows is a biography that does not follow a straight line. Khan was born in Azad Kashmir but grew up in Oman, where his family had settled. They moved back to Pakistan around his fifth-grade year. His father is a doctor. His siblings went into medicine. He went into International Relations at a University of London affiliated centre in Islamabad, with a plan to sit the CSS exam and join the foreign ministry or an NGO. He failed A-level maths twice, pivoted to a subjective degree, and graduated with first-class honours — a result, he says, that his own university peers refused to believe.

Before any of that, there was cricket. Khan describes himself as a genuinely good cricketer who was noticed by professionals. “Maybe if I had continued, maybe I would be playing PSL right now — who knows,” he says. But cricket gave way to gaming zones, gaming zones gave way to DOTA, and DOTA eventually gave way to PUBG Mobile.

The boot camp that nobody else was doing

Khan’s DOTA team, Team NV, spent two years undefeated in Pakistan. But the path to that record was not smooth. The turning point came after a humiliating loss at a large tournament in Lahore — a tournament the team had travelled to with full confidence and almost no money.

“On the way back from Lahore,” Khan explains, the five friends held a team discussion. They made a pact: a full six weeks of daily structured practice, living together at one friend’s house. No casual sessions. Proper grind with a strategy behind it. “That concept didn’t exist in any other team at the time,” he says. Boot camps were something they had seen international teams do. In Pakistan, nobody had tried it.

A month later, they entered another tournament and, in his words, “beat everyone like children.” The discipline was the edge. When they later played an Indian team online — a team that was salaried, sponsored, and had been undefeated in India — and beat them in the finals, word spread across Pakistan. “A revolution type thing happened,” Khan says. That win, he believes, is what triggered the first wave of organised online tournaments in the country.

Why mobile gaming has twice the prize pool of PC gaming

When a major tournament organiser announced both a DOTA 2 event and a PUBG Mobile event simultaneously, the prize pools told the story: three lakh rupees for DOTA, six lakh for the mobile game. Khan had never seen three lakh. Six lakh on a mobile game was enough to make him switch.

Muzamil pushes on why mobile gaming commands so much more money. Khan’s answer is structural. “Mobile gaming is accessible to everyone,” he says. “Even a cook at my friend’s house was playing PUBG.” PC gaming requires a machine, a Steam account, technical knowledge, and a decent internet connection. PUBG Mobile requires a phone. In South Asian countries — Pakistan, Bangladesh, India — the middle class and below can participate in mobile gaming in a way they simply cannot with PC gaming. That reach is what attracts sponsors. That reach is what drives prize pools.

The debate between PC and mobile gamers is ongoing and heated, Khan acknowledges. But the numbers settle it: “PC tournaments have been getting half the prize pool that mobile gaming gets.”

$50,000 in team earnings — and the ecosystem behind it

Muzamil asks Khan directly how much he has earned. Khan is precise about the framing: he is talking about team earnings, not personal income. “In 2021 alone, I want to say almost $50,000 — overall if I calculate.” He walks through the arithmetic: one tournament alone paid out one crore rupees to the team. At the time of recording, that converted to roughly ninety lakh rupees across the year.

But prize money is only one revenue stream. Khan lists the others: YouTube channels, streaming income, brand sponsorships, and in-app purchases. He notes that Pakistani mobile gamers spend over $25 million annually on mobile games alone — not counting in-app purchases. DOTA’s most recent World Cup had a prize pool of $50 million, funded largely by in-app purchase revenue that flows directly into the prize pool. “Some cricketers have never seen $50 million in a tournament,” he says.

The current sponsor for Khan’s team is a private individual based in the United States. Several international companies have approached the team but pulled back immediately upon seeing a Pakistani passport. It is a recurring friction point in the conversation — talent is not the bottleneck.

The structure of professional PUBG Mobile in Pakistan

Later in the discussion, Khan maps out how the competitive ladder actually works. Amateur tournaments feed into pro-level national competitions. Winning at the pro level earns a team a place in the PUBG Mobile Pro League — Pakistan’s own recognised region within the global structure. The top teams from that league qualify for the South Asia and Middle East regional championship. Winners of that regional event go to the World Cup, which is held at a studio in Frankfurt, Germany, with sixteen teams flown in from across the world.

Pakistan has only hosted two offline esports events in its entire history. Everything else has been online. The Pro League running at the time of this episode pays one lakh rupees per match win — every weekend, across multiple weeks. “It’s like a job,” Khan says. “We have a schedule. We have to put in the hours the same way someone has a nine-to-five.”

As captain, Khan’s responsibilities go beyond playing. He does the short-calling during matches, sets the strategy, and manages the team’s preparation. One of his current teammates is sixteen years old, from Dadu in Sindh. Another is from Peshawar. Another from Sialkot. The team is assembled from across the country, competing entirely online.

The age question and what comes after playing

Muzamil raises the age question directly: Khan is 27, which in conventional sport is considered a peak year, but also the beginning of the end. Does age matter in esports?

“It does,” Khan says without hesitation. International sponsors prefer younger players because certain games demand fast reflexes, and teenage players are measurably quicker. But Khan’s answer to this is the same answer a veteran cricketer might give. “I am a captain. I do the short-calling. The young player does the work.” Experience and game sense compensate for reaction time. And when playing days end, the industry has other roles: coaching, casting, talent scouting, working within an organisation’s esports department.

He is not coaching yet. He says doing so now would split his focus and hurt his performance. But the exit strategy exists, and he is aware of it.

Turning down scholarships and the logic of no backup plan

One of the sharpest moments in the conversation comes when Khan describes what he gave up to pursue esports full-time. After graduating with first-class honours, scholarship offers arrived from Germany and Norway. Local job offers came in too. He turned all of them down.

“If you have a backup plan, you are not fully committed to your plan A,” he says. “And no plan A becomes successful that way.” He is still receiving job offers at the time of this recording. He is still saying no. His reasoning is not bravado — it is a calculated bet that partial commitment produces partial results.

Muzamil notes that Khan also managed his family carefully. He made a deal: graduate properly, prove the academic ability, then ask for permission to pursue esports. He delivered first-class honours. The family agreed. “You have to make it work,” Khan says. “You cannot just say the family won’t support me. I proved it first.”

Pakistan at eleventh in the world — and what thirty years might look like

By the end of the conversation, Muzamil asks Khan the question he puts to every guest: where does Pakistan go from here, thirty years out?

Khan’s answer is grounded in what he has seen from inside the industry. Pakistan currently ranks eleventh in international esports rankings. India, he says, is not in the same bracket. “People internationally are recognising Pakistan as a force.” He mentions Sumail Hassan — a Pakistani DOTA player who moved to the United States, was picked up by a team, given a PC and internet access and proper support, and went on to win the DOTA World Championship as one of the youngest millionaires in esports history. Khan knew Sumail personally; they used to play together when Sumail was still in Pakistan.

The broader point is about infrastructure and recognition. Lahore Qalandars, the PSL franchise, had reportedly been in talks to sponsor a PUBG Mobile team. A government ministry had announced plans for a multi-million rupee esports tournament. The Gamers Galaxy event had aired on television. “In the next three years, something big will happen in esports in Pakistan,” Khan says. “I am pretty sure.”

On Pakistan overall, he is careful. Political leadership matters, he says — without naming anyone. “If you have a good leader, growth follows. It takes time.” His final word is simple: “I have good vibes for Pakistan.”

Muzamil closes by calling Khan one of the pioneers who created space in an industry that had no space when he started. The description fits. Khan PUBG did not find a path. He built one, lost in Lahore, moved into a friend’s house for six weeks, and ground his way to the top of it.