More record-breaking prizes on the way with this year’s International
A new year, new tournament, and a new prize pool record to be shattered. In what has become a tradition among Esports fans, every year we see a growth in the prize pool of Dota 2’s biggest annual tournament The International which recorded a whooping $18 million prize pool last year, and it looks like this record will also be broken this year.
Previous Internationals let players raise the overall prize pool through an in-game compendium, with a percentage of the compendium going towards the prize pool.This year, however, Valve is replacing it with the International Battle Pass, which is exactly the same as the compendium except for one thing—it now acts as a season pass for both the Manila Major and the International 6. This allows buyers to predict the outcome of either tournament for the chance of earning in-game rewards, something that was previously unavailable in the International compendiums as they only encompassed one event.
The 2016 battle pass went on sale 11 days ago, and already the prize money has more than quadrupled from the initial $1.6 million that Valve contributes. As if that wasn’t crazy enough, last year the community raised a staggering $18.4 million, roughly $16 million more than in 2013. Despite the large amount of money already in this year’s prize pool, the battle pass is actually selling worse on its eleventh day than the two previous year’s compendiums. A comparison was revealed and the last few days have been a slow burn currently for TI6’s Battle pass.
What’s interesting is that, despite the current figures, the International 6 battle pass has still generated a larger amount of money than the two last compendiums had after the 11 day period. The International 6 will be held from August 8 to 13, making it safe to assume that this year may once again follow the current trend and shatter last year’s record-breaking prize pool.
