One of the mobile esports tournaments that has been going under the radar is the upcoming Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI) Series (BGIS) 2025. The tournament is scheduled to take place in Kolkata, India. Recently, Krafton India announced that the prize pool of BGIS 2025 has increased to Rs 32,000,000 ($374,763). Therefore, this has made it one of the biggest prize pools ever seen for a regional esports tournament. In this article, we will take a deep dive into this announcement, its impact, and what the future holds for BGMI Esports.
The Importance of Tournament Prize Pools in Esports
Image Credits: Krafton India
Prize pools from various tournaments form a significant revenue source for most Indian esports organizations.
Many organizations in esports primarily use prize pools as a means to gauge the amount they can invest in a team. When we examine the country of India, it has the largest population in the world. While it is a developing nation, it has one of the highest rates of mobile phone ownership. Around the world, India has one of the lowest prices for internet plans as well.
Since its return in 2023, BGMI has become the most popular game in the country. On the Google Play Store, it is consistently among the top two highest-grossing games within the country. The other video game is Free Fire MAX, the high-resolution version of the game Free Fire.
More Than Just Chicken Dinners: The Life-Changing BGIS 2025 Prize
When BGIS 2025 was announced, its prize pool was the same as last year’s event, $234,300 or 20,000,000 INR. During an event in Delhi, Krafton India announced that it will be releasing a BGIS 2025 crate in the game. The revenue generated from this crate will be added to the BGIS 2025 prize pool.
On April 16th, Krafton India announced that they are adding another $140,536 to the prize pool of the event, making it the highest of any event in the country. This begs the question of whether the new prize pool is one of the highest in the world for a mobile esports tournament. If we examine mobile esports with regional tournaments, the major ones include Mobile Legends Bang Bang, PUBG Mobile, and Honor of Kings.
If we take a look at the major leagues within MLBB Esports, the two notable ones are the MPL Philippines and MPL Indonesia. In the ongoing Season 15 of both events, MPL PH has a prize pool of $150,000, whereas MPL ID has a prize pool of $288,673. According to Esports Charts, MPL ID Season 15 has an average viewership of 429,402 viewers. When we compare this to BGMI Esports, this number is quite similar to the peak viewer count during Battlegrounds Mobile Pro Series 2024.
If we examine HOK Esports, the Honor of Kings Invitational 2024 Season 1 and Season 2 each had a prize pool of $150,000. Thus, making the sum of both events less than the upcoming BGIS 2025. Even the recently concluded PUBG Mobile Global Open 2025, which was held in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, had a prize pool of $500,000.
Major Takeaways For The Future of Esports In India
Image Credits: Bryan Francis
Following the launch of the Esports World Cup, we have seen multiple games have a prize pool of $1 million. This has easily inflated the salaries and revenue that esports teams generate on an annual basis. While BGMI isn’t a part of the upcoming Esports World Cup, this has resulted in players not being as inflated as in other countries.
According to the brand ambassador of Revenant XSpark, Scout stated on one of his streams that a good BGMI team in India would cost an organization $11,711 per month. This would include the salaries of 5 professional BGMI players and a coach. Back in 2024, his team went on to win both major BGMI tournaments in India. These tournaments were BGIS and BMPS 2024, which earned XSpark a revenue of $478,807.
Back in 2022, I had written an article titled “What is stopping India from becoming an esports giant?”. Within that article, I mentioned how esports players had to face multiple hurdles in the past. Now, many of those hurdles have been pushed aside as the country’s government is slowly opening up to the idea of esports.
Recently, the government of the state of Tamil Nadu in India announced its own Esports tournament known as the Chennai Esports Global Championship, slated to take place in 2025. The roadmap of the second half of BGMI Esports in 2025 is planned to be announced on the last day of BGIS 2025. The excitement for esports is only building in India.
With the recent announcement between Reliance and Blast TV, 2025 is the year when Esports in India will be noticed by stakeholders worldwide.