Esports games dynamics by prize money in 2016–2024

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At the top of the esports industry are a wide variety of titles, some staying slow and steady in their systems, whereas others are more volatile year-on-year. Rather than viewership, prize pools provide a wider view of where the money is behind the industry comes from: whether from the developers, their partners, and sometimes, the fans. Powered by our database which has operated since 2016, Esports Charts presents an overview of how the industry has evolved.

Looking back across the years, Valve’s TI was a trailblazer in the esports industry, turning heads with its $1.6M prize pool for its inaugural edition in 2011. No other esports game had ever held a million-dollar tournament, and each year the newest TI would break records. Valve developed a fan-funded system for the tournament in 2013, allowing it to reach even higher peaks: on top of the $1.6M organized by Valve, a percentage of in-game item sales is funnelled to the tournament. 

Dota 2 is the leader of esports in prize pools, just about coming out ahead of Counter-Strike in the past year. Powered by Valve’s The International (TI) series, the title reached its peak in 2021, when it offered up over $49.1M in prizes, of which over $40M came directly from TI. 

In the past few years, Dota 2’s The International prize pools have indeed been falling significantly. Although Valve continues to supply their constant $1.6M, the fan-funding side of the community has steadily been contributing less and less. While Dota 2’s TI popularity might be on a downward momentum in past years, it still stands as a historical event series which revolutionized the esports scene.

Not all games source their prize money the same way; Dota 2 relies heavily on fan-funding, whereas League of Legends is effectively entirely funded by Riot Games. Games with developer-run leagues and circuits to fill out the year generally exhibited more stable prize pools over the years. League of Legends, Call of Duty, and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege recorded some of the most stable results over the years, thanks to sourcing a large portion of their prize money from reliable, developer-organized events.

Counter-Strike, on the other hand, receives its sizable prize pool largely from third-party events. 2024 saw Valve host two CS Majors, with $1.25M offered a piece, but does not nearly account for the entire $22.8M in prizes that year. Counter-Strike is known for far many more events than other top titles, and these hundreds of tournaments helped it set a new prize pool record last year. On top of major investments from significant third-party organization’s, the game also sees hundreds of smaller events take place: all of which can add up quite quickly.

Fortnite is a rather odd outlier, with a massive spike to $51.9M USD in 2019. The game’s popularity exploded in the late 2010s, and 2019 was the year Epic Games went all in on their game’s esports scene, throwing the most funding into their tournaments. Not only did the Fortnite World Cup 2019 Finals host a whopping $30M prize pool, many other official events hosted seven-figure prize pools. Even the Twitch Rivals TwitchCon Fortnite Showdown had $1.35M up for grabs, the most any Twitch Rivals event has ever offered. Moving past this peak, Fortnite has enjoyed steady multi-million prize pools yearly.

Valorant is also an interesting case as one of the newest breakouts of the esports industry. Developers Riot Games have plenty of esports experience from their work with League of Legends’ scene, and they’ve faced no delays in launching Valorant to the top of the industry. 2021 marked the inaugural season of the VCT, with over $7.36M in prizes recorded for this year. Since then, prize pools have only continued to climb as Valorant’s global popularity keeps growing.

Honor of Kings is a prime example of a rapidly growing esports title. Supported by its developers in the form of official events, the game has continued to grow year-on-year. The game sometimes can fly under our radar as a large portion of its audiences come from mainland China; Chinese livestreaming platforms do not provide accurate, public viewership statistics, meaning we cannot track viewership for them.

Honor of Kings has been steadily increasing in prize money, with the developers continuously investing more and more into their game’s events. Last year saw Honor of Kings host its biggest purse yet, $20.6M. At this momentum, the game could soon be one of esports’ top titles.

PUBG: Battlegrounds also enjoy a significant spike in 2021, thanks to the massive PUBG Global Invitational.S 2021 ($7M+) and PUBG Global Championship 2021 ($4.34M). These events employed a crowdfunding system through in-game purchases similar to Dota 2, and enjoyed great success in this year particularly. PUBG esports took a break in 2020 due to the pandemic, and fans came back strong the following year. 

A diverse range of games made up our top ranking here, spread across PC and mobile gaming esports. While PC esports titles have long dominated the cultural sphere in the West, mobile gaming found a solid audience to build on in Asia, as well as regions such as LATAM and MENA. Now, tournaments in MLBB host some of esports’ most popular spectacles, regularly reaching multi-million viewers.

2020 marked a shift in the global esports industry, with all sides of the scene affected by shutdowns and travel restrictions. During this turbulent period, mobile gaming continued to host more online tournaments and build up its popularity. For the past few years now, mobile gaming has been regularly able to compete with PC esports in terms of prize pools. 

Across both the PC and mobile parts of esports, games which rely on develop-run circuits as the premiere events of the year record stable prize pool results year-on-year. On the other hand, games which instead put a focus on fan-funded events and third-party events may be less stable, but allow for greater growth and peaks. Each year, the esports industry is changing, and Esports Charts helps our users stay on track with our data-driven solutions.