The top 5 profitable esports disciplines

Esports has already stopped being just entertainment for many people but become the complete way of making money. While one people make a profit by betting on esports matches, others take part in them directly. If you want to join the second camp, we strongly recommend choosing an esports discipline wisely because not all of them are similarly perspective financially. We will tell you about five esports directions with the biggest prize payments below.

Dota 2

In 2011, the first The International in history was carried out – the international Dota 2 tournament, which was organized by the development company Valve. Since then, Dota 2 has had no competitors in terms of the prize pool and the winners of The International earn a few times more than prize winners from other esports disciplines.

The prize pool of the tournament grows from a year to a year. It had amounted to 25 million dollars back in 2018 but this sum increased to 34 million dollars in 2019. Totally, 140 million dollars have been up for grabs by Valve for 9 years of The International. The CIS teams held prize places at the championship for a few times and earned significant sums for this.

CS:GO

CS:GO is the first competitor of Dota 2 in terms of popularity among gamers. Despite the eternal competition of two disciplines by the demand, the prize pools, CS:GO is obviously behind «Dota».

Every year, Valve hosts two Major tournaments with the overall prize pool of 1 million dollars. The number of secondary CS:GO tournaments (the ones, which are organized by the third-party companies) with significant prize pools is big. It is impossible to calculate the exact sum but it is definitely bigger than 20 million dollars

Fortnite

Fortnite is a video game, which was released in 2017. Due to the developer’s efforts, including the organizing of competitions with rich prize pools, Fortnite managed to become recognized among gamers quickly. More than 78 million people were playing Fortnite on a regular basis in a year after its release.

The development company Epic Games was so inspired by the success that it decided to continue investing big sums into its child. In 2019, it detached 100 million dollars for prizes. Despite it has surpassed the above-mentioned company Valve’s efforts, we can’t place Fortnite higher than Dota or CS:GO. The thing is that the highly-promising game and its developers have not passed the time test.

League of Legends

League of Legends is a popular video game with a monthly audience of 100 million people. Unlike Dota 2 or CS:GO, all bigger or smaller LOL tournaments are hosted under Riot Games’ control.

Every year, the company carried out the League of Legends World Championship, to which the winners of the summer Splits are invites. With the growth of the game’s popularity, its prize pool increased too. It had amounted to 2,3 million dollars in 2015 but it was about 5 million dollars in 2019

Overwatch

Overwatch is a good choice to start an esports career. During the last few years, the development company Blizzard works on the creation of the professional league in this discipline and provides large sums to host competitions.

In 2018, the developers of the shooter organized the first season of Overwatch League, in which 3,5 million dollars were up for grabs. The tournament was carried out successfully and it was repeated a year later. By the way, a few secondary matches are hosted in this discipline every year, besides the main Overwatch championship.