The eSports industry has significantly grown in the past few years. In 2018, viewership of eSports gaming has peaked at 400 million worldwide. The industry made around $869 million and this is only expected to go up in the next few years.
With last year’s statistics and success of many eSports tournaments, this year promises to be more thrilling. Tournaments anticipated this year are just ready with better prizes, and professional gamers are simply more eager to win.
Last year, the biggest prize pool has to be the international tournament for DOTA 2 players with a total of $41.26 million for its winners. The International 2018 was held in Vancouver Canada in August 2018 and the champions brought home more than $25 million (USD).
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Viewers don’t just watch these games anymore. They also take the time and spend some money to predict who the winners will be. After all, what is sports without betting? Esports betting is quickly becoming popular and this includes BitCoin gambling.
Whether you’re a professional player or not, you’re probably curious about the biggest eSports tournaments this year. Non-players are looking forward to placing their bets on their favorites and simply enjoy watching teams go against each other. We’ve ranked the anticipated eSports tournaments this year according to their prize pool. Here they are and what you should know about them.
Counter-Strike GO
Counter-Strike’s annual tournament has already taken place early this year at the Intel Extreme Masters Katowice Major 2019. Twenty-four teams competed and the prize pool was worth $1 million. It started in February and ended the following month.
The biggest win was from the team Astralis, which is for $500,000. Following them is team ENCE which won a total of $150,000. There are other tournaments that involve the game and some of these are the Pro League Season 9 and eSport Championship Series. However, the IEM Katowice Major 2019 had the biggest prize pool for the longest time.
Overwatch
The Overwatch League debuted in January of last year and its success made its second season possible. Last year’s biggest winner of this tournament was London Spitfire. The team brought home more than 1.2 million dollars of prizes with $1 million as the grand prize.
The prize money for the first half of this year’s OWL tournament has already reached $3.5 million, and it is expected to go up to $5 million by the end of the season.
The OWL season 2 has already kicked off in February of this year and currently, the New York Excelsior is on the lead. They are followed by London Spitfire and Philadelphia Fusion. The playoffs aren’t completely scheduled yet, but the whole season is expected to end by the end of August.
League Of Legends
Last year’s LoL World Championship tournament ended up giving away $6.450 million to its winners. The biggest win was from team Invictus who went against Fnatic at the finals. It was a 3-0 win and simply the biggest win in this championship so far.
The Finals for this year’s LoL World Championship will be held in Paris, France. The Mid-Season invitational happened in May with a prize pool of $1 million. The final is set to start in October and end in November 2019.
DOTA 2
This year’s The International has already raised more than $28.93 million for its prize pool. Interestingly, this was done primarily through crowdfunding. This time last year, they already raised around $25.5 million, so they are pretty much on track to beat their prize pool record.
The event will be completely held in China. It has already started on July 3 with 12 teams coming from the DOTA Pro Circuit and 6 teams from Regional Qualifiers. The main event is scheduled on August 20 to 25 2019.
Fortnite ($14.7 Million)
Epic Games’ Fortnite is this year’s best tournament when it comes to the prize pool. The 2019 Fortnite World Cup is tied with its prize pool of an astounding amount $100 million! This has to be the largest prize pool for any eSports tournament this year.
The success of the game alone in 2018 made this big prize pool possible. This is the first-ever Fortnite tournament and Epic Games, the developers of this game, will facilitate the whole thing. The prize pool is set to be spread over a number of events this year.
The final is scheduled on July 26 to 28 of this year. It will be held in New York and will feature both solo and dual games. Prizes will be based on merit, but for this event alone, the winners would get $30 million.
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