Games With The Largest Prize Pools In eSports History

Video games have always been popular but not as much as it is today. eSports has become so popular that maybe in a few more years, it will become as popular as other conventional sports. When we were all little kids, we all loved playing games, and some of us still do even though we’ve become full grown adults. If you love video games, then surely you must have dreamed of becoming rich and famous just by playing video games. Now that’s the dream. Well, today that is certainly possible, as competitive gaming has become such a huge hit that eSports now that world tournaments that have prize pools that reach and even go over the six digit mark. Here are 5 games with the largest prize pool in eSports history.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive – $1,500,000

The World Electronic Sports Games 2016 Counter Strike Tournament

Counter Strike is one of the most popular first person shooter games of all time. Before, the highest prize pool for Counter Strike tournaments were capped at $250,000.00, even though another game from Valve, Dota 2 has an annual multi-million dollar cash prize tournament called “The International”. They have recently introduced crowdfunding via in-game items and compendium which has helped CS:GO reach the $1 million dollar prize ppol for the first time in history during the MLG Major Championship in Columbus in 2016. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has the 5th highest prize pool of $1,500,000 which was given during the World Electronic Sports Games 2016 held at Changzhou, China, with team EnVyUs winning $812,000 of the total prize pool.

Call Of Duty: Black OPS III- $2,000,000.00

Call of Duty XP Championship 2016

Just like Counter Strike, Call of Duty is another first person shooting game that is very popular. Call of Duty has a world championships that started in 2013, and is held each year after a new release of the game. The tournament is dominated by the American and United Kingdom eSports team representatives. The American team have won the championship for the past 3 to 4 years. In 2013, the Call of Duty tournament first broke the $1 million prize pool record during the Call of Duty Championship 2013. During the Call of Duty XP Championship 2016, it had the highest prize pool in Call of Duty history with $2,000,000 million. Team EnVyUs got first place and won 800,000, which was split into four ways, between the four players that participated in the 4v4 tournament structure of Call Of Duty.

Halo 5: Guardians – $2,500,000

The prizes for the Halo World Championship

Halo 5: Guardians was first released back in 2015, and hasn’t had as much tournaments as others on this list. In previous years, the prize pool for the Halo World Championships were always $1,000,000, but when they introduced crowd-sourcing methods like, they were able to raise a $2,500,000 prize pool for the 2016 Halo World Championships which was held on October 30, 2016 at Hollywood, California. 16 teams fought but the one to come out on top was American team Counter Logic Gaming that received the first place prize of $1,000,000. The tournament has a 4 versus 4 tournament style match, and the four players each went home with $250,000.

League Of Legends – $5,070,000

The 3-time League of Legends World Champs

League of Legends is the game with the largest active player base in the world. Even though it wasn’t able to beat the record prize pool set by Dota 2, the $5,070,000 prize pool for the League Of Legends 2016 World Championship was able to beat their previous record of $2,130,000 of the League Of Legends 2015 World Championship. The higher prize pool was thanks to the crowd-funding method that they introduced in last years tournament. The world of League of Legends have been dominated by the South Korean team SK Telecom T1, winning the World Championship three times for 2013, 2015, and 2016. They were able to receive the first place prize of $2,028,000 which was split into six, which means it was split up into $338,000 each.

Dota 2  – $20,770,640

Chinese team Wings Gaming win the International 2016

Dota 2 is one of the largest and most popular Multiplayer Online Battle Arena games. The International is the world championship tournament for Dota 2, which is known for having the highest prize pools in eSports history. The International 2015 had a prize pool of over $18 million, which was then beat by The International 2016 with a prize pool of $20,770,640.

The initial cash prize was only $1,600,000, but the rest of the money was raised by the Dota 2 community through crowd-funding, by purchasing in-game compendiums called “Battle Passes.” The overall purchase amounted to $76,682,560, and 25% of the proceeds went into the prize pool for the tournament. 16 teams fought, but it was the Chinese team “Wings Gaming” that came out on top, and was able to receive the first place prize of  $9,139,002,00. Each member of the 5-man team was able to receive over $1.8 million each. The other teams certainly didn’t go home empty handed, since they were all able to receive a hefty prize. It seems the The International 2017 will have an even higher prize pool than the previous years.