Esport Tournaments and prize pools in 2017
Each year shows significant growth in E-sport industry. It’s very likely than in next couple of years the revenue from e-sports for single player will match earning of professional NBA or football player that can easily earn 20 million dollars per tournament (not counting money from various commercials and other kind of activity).
Tournament organizers do not really hide the prize pool available for the winners. The numbers of noticeable Tournament prize pool may vary between $5 000 and may end on whopping $20 000 000. As mentioned, those prizes are definitely going up next year.
Let’s check, how much money professional players (or teams) could win when playing particular PVP oriented game.
LoL: League of Legends
League of Legends quickly became one of the most popular esport out there with huge prize pool distributed among top players every year now. Below are couple of tournaments in which winning matches in League of Legends could result in becoming considerably richer.
CS:GO Counterstrike
For years now, CS:GO holds the throne of the most popular e-sport oriented shooter. With millions of players playing and watching the game, this pretty old game continues to be on the top. Prize pool is going up every year, although the biggest prize pool was offered on World Electronic Sports Games 2016. Check the table below to see other tournaments that were available for CS:GO
SCII: Starcraft II
Definitely one of the best real-time strategies currently available for gamers. This fast paced game is extremely difficult for masters, as it not only requires you to make a very quick decisions but also you need to control your units even faster. It’s unfortunate that the prize pool in those tournaments isn’t as high as in other popular games.
OW: Overwatch
By now, everybody knows that Overwatch even despite its HUGE player base, isn’t going to become more popular e-sport than CS:GO anytime soon. This is due to the fact that Overwatch’s thought was to make it a playable game, not an e-sport game. The notion of Overwatch becoming an e-sport game emerged by the end of development time, making it very difficult to adjust things to make it more e-sport friendly. There are many negative concerns that Overwatch is one of the most boring e-sports currently available, due to META that in 90% of games consists in the same champions being picked every time. Perhaps, in the future with more heroes and improvement in balance this will change.
HS: Hearthstone
Card games are on the rise. Currently Hearthstone is the only game that is such a popular e-sport, although the most iconic title and most future card game ideas come from Magic the Gathering. Currently many people hope that year 2018 will bring rise to Gwent, Witcher universum card game and many noticeable and exciting tournaments. Nevertheless, Hearthstone is currently extremely popular and we believe that the prize pool for this game is only going to go higher every year.
Dota 2
The biggest competitor for League of Legends. And while League of Legends is watched at least 3 times as much on Twitch as Dota 2, this game is actually the best when it comes to prize pool. Single tournament has even $24 000 000 prize pool.
For more games check the table we’ve prepared below, let us know in the comments if we’ve missed something important:
| Tournament | Date/Duration | Games | Prize pool |
| NGE Winter Premiere | January 3 – January 31 | OW | $100,000 |
| 2017 GSL Season 1 | January 4 – March 25 | SCII | $142,660 |
| ASL Season 2 | January 10 -January 22 | SCBW | $21,600 |
| WESG 2016 | January 12 – January 15 | SCII, CS:GO, Dota, HS | $5,000,000 |
| DreamHack Leipzig | January 13 – January 15 | CS:GO, Pkmn | $100,000 |
| Ting Open Season 3 | January 15 – March 26 | SCII | $5,000 |
| LCK regular season | January 17 – April 2 | LoL | $250,000 |
| OGN Overwatch APEX Season 2 kickoff | January 17 | OW | $178,000 |
| SL i-League StarSeries S3 China -WC | January 17 – January 18 | CS:GO | $300,000 |
| EU LCS regular season | January 19 – April 2 | LoL | $200,000 |
| LPL regular season | January 19 – April 16 | LoL | $510,000 |
| NA LCS regular season | January 20 | LoL | $200,000 |
| HCG 2017 EU and NA season kickoff | January 20 | HotS | N/A |
| NationWars 4 semis and finals | January 21 | SCII | $17,600 |
| Dota Pit League Season 5 | January 20 – January 22 | Dota 2 | $139,860 |
| Genesis 4 | January 20 – January 22 | Melee, S4 | $58,111 |
| NationWars 4 semis and finals | January 21 | SCII | $30,000 |
| ELeague Major | January 27 | CS:GO | $1,000,000 |
| ZEN Esports Network League 2017 (ANZ) | February 4 – April 13 | CS:GO | $100,000 |
| ESL Pro League Season 5 – NA | February 7 – May 18 | CS:GO | $580,000 |
| MLG CWL Atlanta Open | February 10 – February 12 | CoD | $200,000 |
| DreamHack Masters Vegas | February 15 – February 19 | CS:GO | $450,000 |
| BEAST 7 (Sweden) | February 17 – February 19 | Melee, S4 | $13,000 |
| Oceanic Summer Series | February 25 – February 26 | OW | $10,000 |
| IEM Katowice | March 3 – March 5 | CS:GO, SCII, HotS | $650,000 |
| Eastern Clash | March 17 | HotS | $100,000 |
| China Cup I | March 17 – March 19 | CS:GO | $100,000 |
| Copenhagen Games 2017 | April 13 – April 15 | CS:GO | $40,000 |
| CEO Dreamland | April 14 – April 16 | Melee, S4, FGC | $500-$4000 |
| cs_summit (Los Angeles) | April 19 – April 23 | CS:GO | $100,000 |
| Kiev Major | April 20 – April 23 | Dota 2 | $3,000,000 |
| DreamHack Austin | April 28 – April 30 | CS:GO, HS, Smash, SFV, SCII | $350,000 |
| DreamHack Tours | May 6 – May 8 | CS:GO | $500,000 |
| DreamHack Summer | June 17 – June 20 | SCII, HotS | $500,000 |
| ESL One Cologne | July 7 – July 9 | CS:GO | $1,000,000 |
| DreamHack Valencia | July 17 – July 16 | SCII, CS:GO | $150,000 |
| Evo | July 14 – July 16 | FGC | $100,000 |
| DreamHack Atlanta | July 21 – July 23 | CS:GO, HS, Dota 2 | $200,000 |
| The International | August 7 – August 12 | DOTA 2 | $24,000,000 |
| Overwatch Pacific Championship S2 | August 18 – October 15 | OW | $250,000 |
| League of Legends Worlds | Septermber 23 – November 4 | LoL | $4,600,000 |
| DreamHack Montreal | September 8 – Septermber 10 | SCII | $50,000 |
| ESL One New York | September 16 – September 17 | CS:GO | $250,000 |
| DreamHack Denver | October 20 – October 22 | CS:GO | $100,000 |
| WCS Global Finals | Novermber 3 – November 4 | SCII | $700,000 |
| DreamHack Winter (Sweden) | November 30 – December 2 | CS:GO | $100,000 |
| 2GG Championship (Santa Ana) | December 1 – December 3 | S4 | $100,000 |