For the first time, Valve's CS:GO has managed to surpass Riot's League of Legends when it comes to overall prize money earned by players throughout the course of the year. This survey, however, doesn't include endorsements and advertisements as well as sponsorships which mean that this is just raw number when it comes to official tournament earnings. And now let's move on to the actual numbers.
CS:GO Beats League Of Legends In Overall Prize Money
First and foremost, the survey came from esportsearnings.com, a crowdsourced database that collects information about Esport tournaments and earnings beginning from 1998 to present. According to their database, for the first time, CS:GO has leapt in the overall prize money earnings despite the decline in the number of available tournaments by 30% from last year. Based on their survey, in 2015, CS:GO had a total of 4,816 recorded tournaments whilst in 2016, it fell to 3,526 - a difference of 1,290 tournaments. Yet, surprisingly enough, its overall prize money has spiked and even surpassed League of Legends'.
How Did It Happen?
According to the data, the overall prize money grew from $66 million of last year to $92 million in 2016 - an astounding growth of 39 percent despite the decline of the number of tournaments held in the same year. On average, the tournament prize pools in CS:GO has doubled from 2015.
You may wonder, what's the cause behind the sudden spike? Well it probably stemmed from the fact 2016 saw a rise in numerous Premier competitive tournaments for CS:GO including ELEAGUE, ECS and Epicenter that offer a hefty amount of cash - a dozen times more than several minor tournaments. This lead to a significant growth in overall prize earnings which consequently contributed to the huge growth of CS:GO market.
As stated above, this numbers do not include advertisements, sponsorships, etc. It could make a huge difference for League of Legends considering that Riot is sponsoring their organizations to help professional teams and players thrive in the growing Esport. It's interesting to see how the two titles would par against each other when all of the statistics will be revealed.
