Fortnite And Dota 2 In Battle For Biggest Prize In eSports

.In the world of eSports, there are many rivalries, but these aren’t just between the players. Of course, every gamer wants to be the best at their respective games but there is an equally interesting contest going on between the games themselves as they bid to be the most prestigious.

All about the Benjamins

There’s seemingly no better indicator of a games prestige than the prizes available for being the best at the game. With Fortnite announcing that their World Cup has a grand prize of $30million it looked set to become the top dog, but perhaps not. Let’s take a brief look at the current champs, Dota 2.

The money chart

The top ten best-paid eSports events of all time are not as varied as you might hope. In the top ten best-paid events of all time, there are only three games. The top five spots are all held by one game and in fact one Tournament, The International, a Dota 2 tournament. Not bad for a game that spawned from a fan-made mod, eh? Atop the table is The Internationals tournament from 2018 with a staggering 25.5 million dollars in its prize pool.

The 6-8th places are currently held by the last three League of Legends tournament. 9th is a Fortnite tournament and finally, we have yet another Dota 2 tourney.

Two horse race

Despite the fact that Dota 2 had dominated the table up until this point, Fortnite does have considerable commercial clout. It is estimated that the company is regularly pulling in excess of 200 million dollars per month! That is an insane amount of money. So when put into context the massive prize fund for their World Cup is a drop in the ocean. Especially when you consider they will probably make a fair amount of money from such a high profile tournament. There’s sponsorship, advertising from their stream, plus ticket and merchandise sales. I’m not suggesting that they will cover their losses, but it is not a simple case of them throwing away more than 10% of their monthly income.

The reigning champ

But of course, DoTA 2 isn’t just going to roll over and concede its title as the best-paid eSport in the world. The International 2019 is imminent, taking place in August. Their own record is $25 million. Valve pledge $1.6 million of their own money to the pool plus 25 percent of all the income from their battle pass sales. Last year this reached $25 million, this year it is at 23 million already and sharply climbing. Valve are very shrewd with their Battle Pass strategy and could well use a sale to spike…