Gaming
Gaming
Dota 2's $100 million milestone, visualised
Prize winnings in Valve’s MOBA have passed into nine digits – a staggering feat for an eSport. Take a look at just how big the game now is with our guide.
With the conclusion of EPICENTER this month the Dota 2 eSports scene hit a significant milestone. Since The International back at Gamescom in 2011 more than $100 million in prize money has been given out at significant tournaments for Dota 2. With the ever increasing prize pools of The International it is easy to see how this milestone has been hit, but hitting it this quickly in the game’s life is still quite the surprise. It was only a few years ago where a $50,000 prize pool would be considered a big deal – and to put things in perspective, it’s more money than has been given away in the history of both pro League of Legends and Counter-Strike, combined.
The $500,000 prize pool for EPICENTER was what initially tipped Dota 2 over the edge of the $100 million mark, but since then that number has grown even more. According to esportsearnings.com the current total sits at $100,560,825.90 – and remember that this figure does not include the prize pool for The International 7, only tournaments that have already happened.
Dota 2 is the first title to hit this historic milestone, and we can assure you that it won’t be the last, despite League of Legends still being $59 million behind it. So to celebrate this historic achievement we scoured the history book and pulled out to calculator to find all the super important data and a few entertaining side notes.
The average Dota 2 tournament payout is $135,344
The average prize pool
© Valve
The stats show that the $100.5 million dollar prize pool for Dota has come from 743 different tournaments. Of course some smaller events will be missing from this as it is impossible to keep track of them all, but it is safe to say that most will be included on this list. A bit of simple maths shows that the average prize pool for each tournament is $135,344.
This is actually a lot more than we expected. While there are many events that have had $500,000+ prize pools there are many more that have significantly smaller ones, including quite a few that are in the hundreds of dollars not thousands. Of course, the $20 million and $18 million prizepots from the last two Internationals have drastically inflated the figure, but even with this taken out, the average stands at a healthy $84,000 per tournament.
A quarter of all Dota 2 prize winnings ever have gone to just two teams
Dota 2 winning percentages
© Valve
The International’s prize pool is a touchy subject, due to how top heavy it makes the scene. A lot claim that the Majors have helped reduce this dramatically, but when you look at the stats they certainly don't lie. If you add the money Evil Geniuses won for winning TI5 and the money Wings won for winning TI6 then it comes to $15,773,662.68, which is just over 15.5% of the total prize money from every tournament. That is just for the winning teams from the last two events. Add in their winnings from other Dota tournaments, and EG and the now defunct Wings Gaming have hoovered up a staggering 23.7 percent of all Dota 2 prize money in the game’s history.
China has taken almost two fifths of all prize money
The winnings of Chinese Dota 2 teams
© Valve
The Chinese dominance of Dota 2 never seems to last more than a few months at best, but that hasn’t stopped the Chinese teams from raking in the cash. Out of the $100,560,825.90 total, $38,671,618.37 has been handed to Chinese teams – 38 percent. The next closest nation is the USA with $9,963,859.98 (whoever said NA Dota was bad?). China’s three TI wins meanwhile, coming at TI2, TI4 and TI6 have netted the nation’s players $15,167,310, which is more than all other nations have won in total.
The prize pool for all of the majors combined still hasn't beaten the TI5 prize pool
The Majors have been heralded by many as the saviours of the Dota scene, and in many ways this is true. However the majors haven’t redistributed the wealth quite as much as Valve perhaps intended. The combined prize pool for the five majors so far is $15,000,000, while the total prize pool for the Internation 5, which took place two years ago was $18,429,613.05. To make matters worse, Evil Geniuses made more for winning TI5 ($6,634,660.68) than OG have for winning four Majors ($4,000,000). Even if OG managed to win the Shanghai Major to win all five of them they would still be $1.6 million behind EG’s payout for one event.
Only five percent of winnings has been given out in online competitions
How much has given out
© Valve
While we all love a good LAN event there are quite a few competitions that are online only. Dota Cinema’s Captains Draft, the Mooduck Elimination mode and the countless show matches are good examples, and we thought that they were becoming quite a common occurrence. But it seems that isn’t the case according to the numbers, as only $5,059,868.14 has been given out in online only competitions with the other $95,500,957.76 (95 percent) being given out in tournaments that had some kind of LAN portion.
Well over half the total prize pool has been given away at The International
Prize money stats
© Valve
When talking about prize pools in Dota it is impossible for the conversation to not be dominated by The International, the tournament that constantly breaks prize pool records. However, what we didn’t expect to find that well over half of Dota’s total prize pool has been given away at Valve’s annual shindig. A whopping $56,205,763.05 has been given away at the International, which comes in at almost 56 percent of all the prize money given away in the game. When you consider that only 32 organisations have ever competed at The International it shows that there’s still a bottleneck for Dota 2 teams, even if it’s wider than it once was. Here’s hoping the next $100m gets spread more widely – a flourishing scene is a win for everyone.
For more eSports coverage, follow @RedBulleSports on Twitter and Instagram and like us on Facebook.
