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Top 10 Video Game Tournaments with Millions Dollar Prizes

Video Game Tournaments

By Danish NazirPublished about a year ago 7 min read
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Top 10 Video Game Tournaments with Millions Dollar Prizes

Whatever others say about video games being a waste of time, if you're really good at them, you might have a chance to win some of that sweet e-sports money that's being handed out these days. No, we're not talking about pocket change to go out and buy a couple cans of beer; we're talking about millions of dollars that you can make by playing video games at the highest level. Electronic sports, or eSports, have taken the entire world by surprise these days.

Teenagers who have spent thousands of hours at home playing their favorite games now have the opportunity to compete at an international level, in front of thousands of spectators in packed stadiums, for multi-million dollar prize pools and a slew of sponsorship and advertising deals. It's exactly like real sports, except that it only took esports a decade and a half to mature to the point where it can compete with more mainstream real sports like hockey, golf, or tennis.

Here is the list of the Top Video Game Tournaments:

10. League of Legends 2015 World Championship

This mega event was held in four different cities last year, with each city hosting a different stage of the tournament. It was the World Championship for League of Legends, the most popular online game in the world, with a massive $2,130,000 prize pool. The tournament lasted one month and was attended by 16 teams, each of which had five players. The group stages were held in Paris, the quarterfinals in London, the semifinals in Brussels, and the finals in Berlin. Isn't it a lot of flying around just to sit and play at a LAN party? Both of the finalists were Korean teams competing for a $1,000,000 prize. The highest number of concurrent viewers (peak concurrent viewers or PCU) for the tournament was 14 million, while the total number of unique viewers was 36 million-the highest for any eSport tournament to date.

9. Halo World Championship, 2016

Held in Hollywood California, during March this year, this tournament boasted an enormous 2.5 million dollar prize pool and was the world championship for the video game Halo 5: Guardians. The winners were team Counter Logic Gaming (CLG) who took home a 1,000,000 dollar prize, to be shared among 4 players. The runners up, Team Allegiance had to settle for a 500,000 dollar prize. Halo is an extremely popular X-box exclusive shooter game which has been extremely popular ever since Halo 1 came out, in fact it is the sole reason some people chose the Xbox over the PlayStation- to play Halo.

8. Smite World Championships, 2015

This was the first World Championship for Smite, an action RTS game designed to compete with more well-known games in the genre such as Dota 2 and League of Legends. It takes a more action-oriented approach, with a lower learning curve than League or Dota. This championship was created to raise awareness of the game and introduce it to the esports community. With a prize pool of $2,612,259, it certainly attracted a lot of attention. Team Cognitive Prime was the first Smite World Championship winner, taking home the lion's share of the prize pool—more than 1.3 million dollars. Team Titan, the runners-up, received 522,000 dollars.

7. The International 2013

Okay, from here on out, the list becomes very one-sided. This means that every tournament in the list after this point is a Dota 2 tournament, purely because of the massive prize pools offered by the game. It's partly due to Valve's innovative crowdfunding model, in which players contribute to the prize pool of each major Dota 2 tournament by purchasing in-game cosmetics and other items. Since the last three years, 25% of that money has been contributed to the prize pool of each year's International, the largest Dota 2 Tournament and, quite frankly, the largest esports tournament in terms of prize pool.

However, they miraculously turned the game around on the base of some really clutch plays by Gustav “S4” Magnusson, the captain of Alliance. The Swedes won a really intense final game, and Natus Vincere was forced to settle for the runner up position, and 632,370 dollars.

6. The Shanghai Major, 2016

Valve, the company that owns Dota 2, has stated that they will host four "Majors" each year, one of which will be The International. Except for the International, each Major will have a base prize pool of $3,000,000, which will be entirely funded by Valve. Every year, this means more stability and income opportunities for everyone in the Dota 2 scene. The Shanghai Major was won by crowd favorite Team Secret, who took home a prize of $1,110,000 USD. Team Liquid finished second and received 405,000. The tournament featured 16 teams representing 21 different countries. Even the last-place teams received a 30,000-dollar prize.

5. The Frankfurt Major, 2015

This was the first Dota 2 Major, held in Frankfurt, and many fans expected it to be the tournament that determined which team would rule the scene for the next three months. The top 16 teams in the world put on a spectacular display of skill and coordination, and the cosplay was fantastic as well. The tournament was a series of upsets in which crowd and analyst favorites were defeated by underdogs, new teams formed in the aftermath of the 2015 International. The tournament was a tale of rags to riches for team OG, a team who was regarded by many as severe underdogs coming into the tournament, but went on to win 1,110,000 dollars worth of money. This major, like the other ones had a prize pool of 3,000,000 dollars. Team Secret was the runners up (went on to win the next Major at Shanghai), and took home 405,000 dollars.

4. The Manila Major, 2016

Held in the Mall of Asia arena at Manila, Philippines, this tournament was a huge success, it featured many awesome games and several comeback stories by teams who had been out of form, but battled it out to place first. It was also the first big Dota 2 tournament to be held in the Philippines, a country that is not really known for esports. Much to the surprise of the organizers, the crowd at Manila was unlike no other, they were constantly making noise, cheering for the local team and were extremely energetic.

3. Dota Asia Championships (DAC), 2015

When it was held in Shanghai in January 2015, the DAC was the largest non-Valve event ever, with a massive 3,057,000 dollar prize pool, second only to The International 2014. (And later by the Majors and International 2015). This tournament saw the debut of a brand new team, Evil Geniuses, led by a skinny 15-year-old Pakistani boy named "Sumail," who had recently moved to the United States to pursue his dream of becoming a Dota 2 professional. Fortunately for him, Evil Geniuses, the largest American gaming organization, recognized the young boy's talent and decided to take a huge risk by including him on the team that was about to compete in a three million dollar tournament.

2. The International 2014

Long story short, this was a 10,000,000 dollar video game tournament. Yep, you got it right, Google it if you don’t believe what you are reading.The magic of crowdfunding showed its power once again, as in he International 2013, the prize pool was a mere 2,874,407 dollars, but this time it exceeded all expectations. Again, you should know that the International is the largest Dota tournament which takes place once a year. Every month, smaller tournaments occur with prize pools in the range of 50,000 to 300,000 dollars. And every week there is like 4 or 5 of these “smaller” tournaments going on simultaneously across the globe. There could be a couple going on in Europe, a few more in China, a couple more in America, and one or two in southeast Asia. Anyways, the International 2014 finals were a long, calculated battle between two Chinese titans, Newbee and Vici Gaming.

1. The International 2015

So, this is the tournament that put “esports” in ESPN. It featured a mind blowing 18,429,613 dollars as prize money, the largest ever prize pool for video game tournaments. Okay, just to give you a better perspective on how large that amount of money actually is, we will compare the prize pools of some conventional sports to that of the International 2015:

  • The Cricket World Cup-10 million dollars.
  • The Master's Tournament(Golf)-10 million dollars.
  • The Super Bowl-8 million dollars.
  • NBA finals-7 million dollars.

And, we have video game tournaments with a prize pool of more than 18 million dollars, well isn’t that something? This was the first ever International to be won by an American team, Evil Geniuses took home more than 6 million dollars in prize money after a grueling battle with the Chinese dark horse team, CDEC. At this rate, we might see a 25 million dollar Dota 2 tournament very soon. And one thing is certain: it will grow even bigger next year, and even bigger the year after that. Not just in terms of prize money, but also in terms of advertising, overall market revenue, viewership, and general public popularity. Gaming is here to stay, and you never know where it will go next.

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Danish Nazir

Hi Welcome!

My name is Danish Nazir. I am a content creator.

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