Counter-Strike’s tournaments prize money surpassed League of Legends this year

With the current year coming to an end in a couple of days it’s time to take a look at some interesting numbers and verdicts of how each competitive game did, as EsportsEarning website published some numbers including the three major games in the field: Dota 2, CS: GO and League of Legends.

In 2016, total prize money grew from just under $66 million to more than $92 million, an increase of 39 percent. Surprisingly, the number of tournaments decreased by 30 percent, from 4,816 to 3,526. In other words, almost 1,300 fewer tournaments paid out about $26 million more. This is thanks to many factors like almost most tournaments have increased the prizes as well as moves like crowfunding for big tournaments like Valve’s Dota 2 and now League of Legends.

For the first time since 2012, League of Legends is not ranked first or second but placed third behind CS:GO, which in turn is now the runner-up to Dota 2. In 2015, CS:GO was still $1.5 million shy of League. This year, however, CS:GO flew past League and is now $7 million ahead. And that’s despite the fact that League’s total prize money grew from $7.7 million to $10.1 million. CS:GO’s prize pool almost tripled. This is thanks to the addition of new, heavy-hitting leagues and tournaments like ELEAGUE, ECS, and Epicenter.

This doesn’t mean League is slowing down on prizes. In fact, the total prize money grew from $7.7 million to $10.1 million. This is in part thanks to Riot opening up to fans about their demands in higher attention to the Esports side like allowing the prize pool of the Worlds championship to consist of a portion of a certain item’s sales, just like Valve does with The International each year.

We will be waiting to see what 2017 brings, as the Esports industry continues to evolve and get bigger.