Even though the esports industry has been around for decades, the prizes for winning used to be very small or non-existent. The competition for top esports games has grown by millions of players in recent years.
The growing public interest in watching, streaming, recording,
playing, and winning has led to advertisers, developers, and markets where
professional gamers are finally starting to out-earn several professional
sports athletes at the top of their industry.
Some of the esports tournaments are funded through its community of
players buying in-game content that has a percentage of its proceeds going to
boosting the prize pool totals. That means for some of these numbers, quadruple
the amount is raised, with the majority of money going to the developers.
Till the last year, the single tournaments in respective titles that
yielded the largest prize pools for its professional esports players are like:
The International 2018 (Dota 2) – $25.53 million
League of Legends 2018 World Championship – $6.45 million
Fortnite Fall Skirmish Series – Club Standings – $4.00 million
Not even a decade ago, esports was only a full-time career choice
for a small handful of top gamers! But many titles that have evolved with the
time and gone mainstream, as well as many old games that refuse to exit and be
retired from the esports scene, are playing their role to take esports to the
threshold of millions!
Here’s how much has been awarded to the gamers from the top 5
esports titles across all years combined:
Dota 2 ($178.07 million, paid to 2929 players, over 1088
tournaments)
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive ($74.65 million, paid to 11536
players, over 4023 tournaments)
League of Legends ($66.23 million, paid to 6242 players, over 2247
tournaments)
StarCraft II ($30.11 million, paid to 1901 players, over 5324
tournaments)
Fortnite ($26.61 million, paid to 2320 players, over 291
tournaments)
The
figures are colossal! The RENAISSANCE has already begun👊
