Total Prize Pool for the League of Legends World Championship
It's been some time since I discussed eSports here, but with the League of Legends World Championships just around the corner, I thought it might be time to start it up again.
While it's important to realize that becoming a professional eSports athlete is damned near impossible for most, the size of the fan base and the growth in the prize pool highlights competitive gaming's rapidly growing popularity.
The League World Championships will have 16 teams pulled from regional competitions. They are then broken into four main groups. Starting next week each of these teams will square off in a round-robin style tournament to determine which eight teams advance to the quarterfinals. On October 3rd, the bracket matches will begin, ending with the grand finals on October 19th.
This year the prize pool sits at $2,130,000 – with the top team taking $1,000,000. That's a fraction of the total pot for The International, but for whichever team that takes it, that's not a bad year's salary. Of course the next team down will only pull $250,000 with the other teams making $150,000 or less. That's just $30,000 per player, not including taxes and team fees. Still not bad, but it shows that while eSports is growing rapidly, very few can make comfortable livings for now.
This marks the first of several articles I'll be doing on the numbers, statistics and scale of League of Legends and the World Championship starting next week. Keep checking back for cool stats and figures as the tournament continues.
You're reading Numbers, a blog on Kotaku that examines games and culture through the lens of math and statistics. To contact the author of this post, write todancstarkey@gmail.com or find him on Twitter @dcstarkey.