Until 2016, Counter-Strike Majors only had a total prizepool of $250,000. And then from
2016 till 2019, that was upped to $1,000,000. For the 2020 Rio major, this was increased
to $2,000,000, but Covid cancelled that event, which is why the upcoming PGL Major is the
first time a Counter-Strike tournament has had a prize pool as big as $2,000,000. This
will be split unevenly between the 16 top teams in the tournament, with the grand winner
getting to take home $1,000,000! That’s a lot of money.
But remember- it isn’t this simple. A Counter-Strike team isn’t just one person- there are 5
players, plus other people like the manager, and then there’s the organisation itself
which likely takes a cut as well. So it’s not like the prize money is cleanly divided
between the players participating in it. And I’m pretty sure each and every team has
a different way of doing things- it’s not something I know about and I’m not going
to speculate. And then, to FURTHER complicate matters is
the stickers. You know all those pick-‘em things that get added to the game in the lead-up
to every major event, where you can buy stickers and bet on which teams you’ll think will
win which rounds? 50% of all money spent on this goes towards the teams and organisations
taking part in the major. So that will further boost how much everybody gets. How much by?
Apparently, it can vary quite substantially. In the worst-case, a sticker can earn a player
less than $10,000. The best-case I’ve heard is from the team stickers, which could bring
in perhaps quarter of a million dollars or so. But that is of course shared between everybody
involved. But this does mean that sticker income is a bigger earner for most teams in
a major than the prize money is. I just need to make all this clear, because
I don’t want you going away from this video thinking that prize money is all that matters,
and is what’s keeping the competitive scene afloat. Prize money is just the tip of a very
deep, and very thicc iceberg. And also remember that this is just one major event- there are
usually several of these a year, in addition to HUNDREDS of other smaller tournaments that
teams can also enter. And then on top of that, players are paid salaries and all sorts.
So this is all obvious stuff, but even I’m guilty of looking at the prizepool and thinking
that’s all there is to it. So I got all this prize information from Liquipedia,
which I will say is a life-saver. What an excellent online resource for anybody even
remotely interested in the esports side of things, for any competitive game with a major
following that you can think of. And Artifact. I also visited esportsearnings which tries
to list all tournaments by their prizepool. And again, I found it to be very interesting.
Dota 2 dominates the top of the list on this site. Then fortnite, then numerous others
including League of Legends and Rainbow Six. CS:GO doesn’t even make an appearance until
number 61, and this wasn’t even a major! Global Offensive has actually had several
tournaments in the past with prizepools greater than $1,000,000 (though none as big as $2,000,000!).
WESG 2016 and 2017 both had a 1.5 million prizepool. ELEAGUE has had several greater
than 1 million. And Intel Extreme Masters already has 2 different million-dollar events
scheduled for 2022. So just know that while the majors are typically seen as being THE
biggest, most important events of the year, Counter-Strike is a big enough scene to host
several others every year with similarly sized prizepools.
Next, I went and compiled the prizepools from different games, picking the biggest event
in 2019, and the largest one from 2021 and or 2022. I tried to omit 2020 because I felt
like covid made it a strange year and unrepresentative of what the prize pools for these games typically
are, though I did feature a Call of Duty event from 2020 because it happened to be the biggest
that series has ever had and it would have been a shame to ignore it.
When I started out on this video, I thought I was going to be talking about the prizes
and how they compared with each other, but it turns out that most of this video is me
trying to explain to you why you can’t trust the figures you can see here! They’re cool
to see, and fun to compare, but don’t see it as anything more than a novelty because
like I’ve spent this whole video emphasising already: the prizepool is just the tip of
the iceberg, and every game has a unique situation of some sort to consider.
For instance, you won’t see Valorant on here. I haven’t excluded this game in fear
of making Counter-Strike look bad. That game just hasn’t been around for long enough
to host a major tournament just yet- the first ‘Champions’ event is just around the corner,
but nothing about the prizepool has been announced yet so I didn’t think it was fair to include
the game at all. Valorant just hasn’t had enough time to reveal its full potential just
yet, unlike the others on this list like Overwatch and Artifact.
PUBG’s another game with an army of asterisks strapped to these prizepool figures. At first
glance, it appears to have just half the prize-pool for 2021 that it had in 2019, but that’s
only because the 2019 event had its prize pool doubled from their own pick-em challenge
event.
Come to think of it, something didn’t add up with these numbers so I did a bit of digging
and it seems like the total prizepool for the 2019 event might have been even more than
stated here - this tweet claims that it even surpassed $6 million! So, in addition to all
the other reasons you might have for not trusting these prizepools, add to that that liquipedia
is a community-maintained resource that isn’t always 100% accurate or current.
AND PUBG’s main focus seems to be in the mobile space. Later this year it’s looking
to host a tournament with a $6 million prizepool. For gaming on a mobile phone. Using your thumbs!
But again, nothing about the specifics has been revealed yet, so I didn’t feature it
on this list. So like I said: enjoy comparing these figures,
but don’t trust them. CS:GO’s majors have always been compared
to DOTA2’s, which on paper look much bigger. And probably are. DOTA’s international events
have their prizepools bolstered by the community surrounding it, buying a Battle Pass which
directly contributes to the figures you can see on this sheet. CS:GO’s stickers aren’t
so transparently shown. Something I do notice about Counter-Strike
events is that the winner gets a larger % of the prizepool than in other games. It used
to be 40%, now it’s 50%. You can see that in other games it’s more like 30% or 40%
of the prizepool, and that more of it goes to the teams who didn’t make the top 8.
League of Legends, for instance- in 2019, first place earned 38% of the prizepool. In
2021? 22%, with all the runners up receiving slightly more instead.
You’re ultimately weighing up the reward for winning a tournament, against giving the
losers enough money to keep them coming back for more. Again, it’s rather obvious that
you don’t want the winning team earning everything because… well, there’s no benefit
to doing that beyond a certain point, while there IS a benefit to paying and encouraging
the other top teams in each tournament hosted.
Fortnite is another game that lets a lot of different teams make a bit of money from being
good enough at the game. There’s a solo and duo tournament, and both of these events
extends its prizepool to the top 100 players. Even the 100th best player in the event receives
a very acceptable $50,000. That’s a lot of people getting a decent prize in Fortnite’s
major events! Compare that with the upcoming CS:GO major, where 5th place gets $70,000
to share between its 5 players and… ‘benefactors’. BUT AGAIN, like I said, the prize money is
just the tip of the iceberg. I also tried to cover older Counter-Strike
games. 1.6 was one of the OG competitive games, but it was a different landscape back then.
The esports scene was nowhere near as big, nor as developed. Yet despite that, I was
surprised by how big the scene still was. Esportsearnings lists over 1,000 tournaments
for CS 1.6, and a combined prizepool of $13 million. Which is just 10 times smaller than
CS:GO’s so far! The biggest documented tournament I could see was CPL Summer 2003, with a total
prizepool of $200,000. First place in 2003 got $60,000! Which, accounting for inflation,
is about $90,000 in today’s money. So actually… not THAT much worse than CS:GO’s earliest
majors. It helps that Counter-Strike reigned for so
long- with tournaments spanning across 14 years! Though most of this admittedly died
soon after CS:GO was launched after 12. Counter-Strike Source had a few good ones!
CGS in 2007 and 2008 both had a prize pool of close to $500,000, with the winning team
getting a respectable quarter of a million. But beyond that, the other ‘major’ tournaments
that game had were a lot smaller, like the 2005 WCG event I’ve listed here.
So yeah, interesting. I have to be careful what I say here, having spent this whole video
warning you how little the prizepool actually matters. But it IS eye-opening to see just
how many million-dollar prizepools there are out there, being thrown around for so many
different games. Covid has definitely disrupted the competitive scene for Counter-Strike,
but with Valve doubling the prizepool, it’s a sign that they want to get back on track,
and that the game might not be dead just yet.
And one more thing to take away from this: bigger prizepools aren’t always better.
They might be for the winning teams, but if just one event dominates the year, it could
be to the detriment of others hosted during that year, and to the scene as a whole. I
think it’s nice that CS:GO has fairly regular major events, but don’t forget about the
others as well. It’s all needed for there to be a healthy competitive scene.