What is the highest prize pool in esports? Since its establishment, the pride of being the best has never been enough, if you want to truly be a professional and make a living, prize support is a must. Different scenes have different prize pools, and something to note is while team games might have large numbers, those are often being split across a larger number of people.
Highest Prize Pool in Esports
The highest prize pool in esports ever was the The International prize pool in 2021. The Dota 2 tournament broke the previous record which also belonged to Valve with the 2019 iteration. Between 18 5-person teams, 90 players were fighting for the Lion’s share of 40 million dollars. Beating out 2019 by 6 million.
Dota 2 is unique in its position as a prize pool leader due to having a mix of 1st party developer support and crowd funding. The Dota 2 TI Battle Pass allows players to actively fund The International while getting rewards for the individual players. These efforts, and the strength of the Battle Pass is what allows for these tournaments to consistently top the charts.
Top 10 Highest Esports Prize Pools
Of the Top 10 highest Prize pools in esports, Dota 2 occupies 8 of them. 7 Internationals straight, and the 9th spot, the Riyadh Masters 2023 all sit with Valve’s flagship MOBA. The player counts have sometimes changed depending on the size of the event, being as low as 16 teams in 2015, and high as 32 teams for Riyadh.
The other 2 slots belong to Fortnite’s breakout year of esports with its 2019 World Cup. Fortnite currently is the Highest Prize Pool in Esports for solo competitors, and for teams of 3 or under. The FWC Finals players made several overnight millionaires. Many of which were under 18 and set for life.
Even events like the Esports World Cup, who’s entire EWC prize pool tagline was about “Life-Changing Prize Money” pales in comparison. While technically the event itself at 60 million dollars is the biggest prize pool in esports, due to it being split across other events, no one sport comes close to the individual event prize pool of The Internationals.
For league ending events, such as the Overwatch League, Call of Duty League or League of Legends World Championships. The biggest of those has peaked at 6.45 million with League in 2018. TI is also considered a league ending event, where teams have to qualify through results at previous events, but setting all of those aside, some of the big stables of the west just don’t match up. The actual highest game that isn’t Fortnite or Dota 2 is Arena of Valor’s Honor of Kings International Championships. They offered a flat 10 million to 16 teams in KIC 2022.
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