E-sports are getting more popular every year, and as their audience increases, so to do
the grand prizes for taking home a championship win.
Whether it’s player support, developer cash injections, or corporate sponsorship, the
e-sports scene is securing bigger prizes every year.
So let’s take a look at the games which managed to secure the biggest prize pools
ever seen in the world of e-sports.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 - Call of Duty XP Championship 2016 - $2,000,000
With a big push of support from both publisher Activision and developer Infinity Ward, the
second Call of Duty XP Championship, held in 2016 managed to make this year’s COD
XP the biggest COD prize pool ever, doubling the prize pool held at the previous year’s
tournament.
32 teams competed in a multiplayer tournament of COD: Black Ops 3 for a piece of the $2,000,000
prize fund.
Team EnVyUS finally beat out Splyce Gaming in a 3-1 final, to take home $800,000 of the
total prize pool.
Next year’s XP Championship is set to improve on 2016’s total, with the teams competing
on the recently released Infinite Warfare.
Halo 5: Guardians - Halo World Championship 2016 - $2,500,000
The Halo world Championships are a relative newcomer to the Halo scene, only opening back
in 2014 after the Master Chief Collection HD re-release of the original games.
Although other Halo championship tournaments have been around since the release of Halo
2 back in 2004, the Halo World Championships is the first tournament which was supported
by its own publishing giant, Microsoft.
The end of the 2016 Halo World Championships saw that prize pool rise to $2.5 million,
of which the winners Counter Logic Gaming took home $1,000,000.
The 2017 event is set to break that total once again.
Smite - Smite World Championship 2015 - $2,612,259
Due to dwindling popularity, it was Smite’s previous year tournament which managed to
secure its largest prize pool and not its 2016 event, which managed to pull in a still
impressive $1,000,000.
The tournament took place across 2 days, from January 9th to the 11th and was eventually
won by COGnitive Prime, who took home a grand prize of $1.3 million.The runners up Titan,
took home just over $500,000 of the prize pool.
With a sadly dwindling player base and no corporate sponsorship in sight for the Smite
World Championships, it’s likely that 2015 will be the highest prize pool the game will
ever see.
League of Legends - LoL 2016 World Championship - $5,070,000
League of Legends is the biggest MOBA in the world, with 7.5 million daily concurrent players.
Its huge popularity is the reason behind its outstanding success when it comes to its tournament
prize pools and why it reaches number 2 on our list.
League of Legends went live in 2009 and has only continued to increase in popularity since
then.
Year on year, the player base gets bigger, with LOL’s expanding popularity attracting
corporate sponsorship and producing even bigger prize pools.
The largest prizes yet were handed out at the LoL 2016 World Championships.
The SK Telecom T1 team took home the grand prize of just over $2,000,000, beating out
the Samsung Galaxy team in the final, who took home an equally impressive $750,000,
with the remainder of the prize pool dealt out to the runners up.
Dota 2 - The International 2016 - $20,770,640
Dota 2 is the very reason we had to condense this list down to individual games and not
contests.
Dota 2’s competitive scene has become so prolific and popular, that it takes up the
first 10 spots of the highest prize pool competitions by itself.
It reached its pinnacle this year at Valve sponsored, The International 2016, which saw
the e-sport produce a prize pool worth just under $21,000,000.
This was a steady increase over the previous 2 years of the tournament, with the 2015 International
drawing in just over $18 million, and the 2014 International bringing in just under
$11,000,000.
In the end Wings Gaming managed to take the cup and also a $9,000,000 grand prize.
That’s all we’ve got for you this week.
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