The International Paid Out Two Point Nine Million Dollars, Five Years After It Paid Out Forty
Dota's world championship ran in Shanghai in August with sixteen teams and a prize pool the size of a mid-tier tournament.
The International, which is still the Dota 2 world championship, was held in Shanghai from the thirteenth to the twenty-third of August. The group stage ran to the sixteenth and the playoffs were at the Oriental Sports Center from the twentieth. Sixteen teams. Total prize pool two point nine million dollars.
The champion took one million two hundred and thirty-five thousand, three hundred and seventy-nine dollars, being forty-two and a half per cent of the pool. Second took three hundred and seventy-seven thousand. Third took two hundred and sixty-one thousand. Sixteenth took fourteen thousand five hundred and forty-five, which does not cover a season of salaries for five players and a coach.
In 2021 the same tournament had a prize pool of just over forty million dollars. The difference is not a collapse in the game's popularity. It is that Valve stopped funding the pool by selling a battle pass to players, which is to say it stopped taking a share of player spending and routing it into prize money.
Seven of the sixteen teams were invited directly, among them Team Falcons, Team Liquid, Xtreme Gaming and Aurora Gaming. The other nine came through qualifiers, including Team Spirit, Nigma Galaxy and OG.
The format was a Swiss group stage seeding a double-elimination bracket, everything best-of-three, the grand final best-of-five for the Aegis of Champions. The Aegis, at least, is unchanged, and it is the only part of the prize that was never denominated in dollars.