Dota 2 The International

One of the biggest esports tournaments in the world, Valve’s Dota 2 holds an annual championship known as The International. After a one-year hiatus caused by the pandemic, the 10th annual edition of Dota 2’s The International will be held in Bucharest, Romania in October 2021. The group stage began on 5 August and the prize pool is worth USD40 million with the winners taking home USD15.6 million and the runners up USD4.46 million.

In 2011, the first The International was held with a USD1.6 million prize pool and by 2019, the prize pool was USD34.3 million. There were also vast sums of money made by those using the best video game wager sites to decide on the winners. The 2019 event was special after team OG won for the second consecutive year after entering from open qualification in 2018 to become world champion, returning in 2019 as an invited team.

Fortnite

Fortnite exploded into the esports market in 2017 and has been successful ever since. The game has turned Epic Games, into a multibillion-dollar business and by 2019, the prize pool was USD30.4 million at the game’s first World Cup. The solo winner was Kyle Giersdorf, who won USD3 million, a remarkable sum for someone aged 16 and more than Tiger Woods won at the Masters (USD2 million) that year.

The tournament also has a competition for two-player teams (“duos”). That competition also featured a USD3 million prize pool in the 2019 competition which was won by Emil Bergquist Pedersen and David W. at the Arthur Ashe stadium in New York City.

The tournament could afford a huge prize pool because of the 40 million people who tried out for a slot in the World Cup finals and the nine million viewers who were online for the final day. There was no World Cup in 2020 and Epic Games has announced there will be no in-person events in 2021, though the company has organised online competitions throughout the year.

PUBG Global Invitational.S (PGI.S)

The PUBG Global Invitational.S in March 2021 offered a prize pool worth USD7 million. The champions, The Susquehanna Soniqs, a North American team, won more than USD1.29 million. The eight-week esports tournament took place in South Korea with 32 of the top international teams invited. The prize pool rose from USD3.5 million to USD7,056,789 due to crowdfunding. Teams from China, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau competed online and partly offline in Incheon, South Korea. The teams did not compete for points, kills or match wins. Instead, prize winnings accumulated by teams throughout the tournament determined where they were placed on the leaderboard.

LoL World Championship

Riot Games LoL World Championship is the most popular of all League of Legends esports events. Here, the top 24 teams compete for a prize pool which in 2018 stood at USD6.4 million, one of the highest in esports history. For the LoL Worlds 2021, the prize pool has fallen to USD2.2 million due to the impact of the pandemic. In 2018, China’s Invictus Gaming took home USD2.4 million of the prize pool after beating Europe’s Fnatic 3-0 in the grand finals.

Honor of Kings World Champion Cup

The 2021 Honor of Kings World Champion Cup was hosted by China and had a prize pool of USD5.8 million. The competition from 1 July to 28 August saw a dozen of the best Honor of Kings teams aim for the championship title which was finally won by QG Happy (winning USD3.25 million) who beat Gank Gaming (USD1.24 million), with Talent Gaming in third place winning USD696,000. In August 2021, Arena of Valor and Honor of Kings announced they would merge, with the AWC 2022 to be shared as one single world championship for both games.

Overwatch

In 2021, Blizzard’s Overwatch League has a USD4.2 million prize pool distributed across all the tournaments and Playoffs, up from USD3.5 million in 2019. The format has been online regional play-in matches leading into a combined double-elimination playoff bracket, to produce two teams for the Grand Finals on 25 September. The 2021 champion will take home a USD1.5 million prize and the championship trophy, while the runner-up wins USD700,000.

Call of Duty League Championship

Activision’s Call of Duty is one of the most successful first-person shooter games. The Call of Duty League – 2020 Playoffs (also known as CoD Champs) was an esports tournament for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare played on PS4. The prize pool of USD4.6 million was higher than both PC and mobile esports events. The Dallas Empire beat Atlanta FaZe in the grand finals and took home USD1.5 million.

The 2021 Call of Duty League Championship Playoffs took place in August and saw the top eight Call of Duty League franchises battle it out from Aug. 19 to 22 for their share of the much smaller USD2.5 million prize pool. Another video game in eSports history to be financially impacted by the pandemic.