Dota 2 Premier Tournament Breaks Esports Prize Pool Record
As of June 5, the prize pool for The International (TI) 5 officially holds the record for having the largest prize pool in Esports history. The tournament has broken the record set during TI 4 at $10,930,698 (P493,176,700) and is still increasing via sales of a digital achievement booklet called the Compendium.
In order for these staggering prizes to materialize, Valve places a base prize pool of $1,600,000 and then gains the rest of the prize money through Compendium sales as well as through the sale of levels.
Currently, the Compendium perks are capped at a maximum of $15 million and given the way that the prize pool has grown over the past 35 days, Valve is set to find ways to create more landmarks for the tournament booklet as the targets are slowly reached one after the other at at a fast rate.
New records, new horizons. Photo: Wykrhm Reddy
At the moment, the prize pool for TI 5 has surpassed those of major sporting events such as the National Football League with $6.5 million, the PGA Tour 2014 at $10 million and even the Cricket World Cup, which boasts a $10.2 million cash prize and is considered to be the biggest tournament in cricket. This is still far away from the prize pools of the FIFA World Cup and the Champions League, but surely, it now carries its weight among traditional sporting tournaments in terms of cash prizes.
This year’s TI is currently standing at $11,531,000 (P520,307,500), increasing by the hour at the time of writing.
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