What is the relation of prize pool and tournament’s popularity — case of The International

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The International series (Dota 2) has always stood out for its massive prize pool: for over a decade now, the tournament has consistently surpassed all other esports events in terms of how much money participating teams can win. Many believe that it is the multi-million-dollar prize money that has made the series so popular among viewers, but in reality, this is not the case.

There is no correlation between the amount of money being awarded and the watch time of a tournament. For example, let's take a look at the MPL Indonesia Season 12 (Mobile Legends: Bang Bang), which had a prize pool of $336.5K and accumulated 116.7 million Hours Watched. This means that for every dollar of prize money, there were 347 Hours Watched. On the other hand, we can look at the popular CCG Magic: The Gathering and its Mythic Invitational 2019. This tournament had 2.2 million HW with a prize pool of one million dollars, which means that for every dollar of prize money, there were only 2.2 HW. 

However, The International series had a specific period from 2017 to 2021, where a correlation could be observed between the prize pool and the Hours Watched of the tournaments.

If we look at the statistics of these three tournaments, on average, there were 2.59 HW per dollar of prize pool. For an ordinary tournament, this would be an extremely low number, but for The International, it turned out to be this way primarily because of the size of the prize money being distributed.

At The International 2022, this ratio increased to 3.58 HW per dollar, primarily because of the reduction in the prize pool. Compared to The International 10, it lost a whopping 52%. However, there was no significant audience decline. The overall HW number also decreased: not by half, but by 36%.

In 2023, Valve decided to remove cosmetic sets from The International 2023 Compendium, leaving only esports content. As a result, players are now less active in purchasing compendiums, and the tournament prize pool is growing extremely slowly. After the Road to The International stage, it stands at just around $3.1 million. However, the tournament has already accumulated 37.7 million Hours Watched, meaning that for every dollar in The International 2023 prize pool, there have been over 12 HW. 

In comparison, at the Riyadh Masters 2023 held in July, where the prize pool was $15 million, there were only 2 HW for every dollar of that amount. The average figure for million-dollar tournaments is slightly over 9 HW.

Despite the sharp reduction in the prize pool, the Dota 2 World Championship still retained its appeal to viewers. The tournament's status plays a more important role than the amount of prize money.