The $24,000,000 video game Tournament.

Why is the Dota 2 International prize pool so freaking big?

It's a video game tournament holding a prize pool of over $24,000,000. U might be asking yourself whether this is actually real, "24 million in real money? US dollars? For playing video games? What?!"

People enjoy digital cosmetic items a lot. The answer to such a high prize pool is the use of highly intelligent marketing strategies by Valve where crowdfunding is at the core. 

What is The International?

The International (or TI, in short) can be summed up to being the Super Bowl of Valve's Dota 2. In Dota 2, two teams of five players battle it out on a specific map. Each player controls a unique character with various abilities, and the objective is to destroy the enemy's main structure. There are various factors and strategic objectives on the map that the players use in order to win. It's fast paced like basketball and calculated like chess and there is an obscene amount of money on the line.

TI is a yearly event and is considered as the peak of the Dota 2 competitive season. The tradition started in 2011 where Valve used the tournament to show the game to the public for the first time and ever since then it has become a yearly event. For fans the tournament represents an opportunity to cheer for their favorite team or player and witness a sky high level of competition as every of the 16 participating teams strives to claim the first spot. For the rest of the people it's just a video game that makes headlines every year because the prize pool is so amazingly huge. 

The Prize Pool

Every year Valve injects only $1.6 million to the prize pool. This means that fans in 2017 contributed over $22,400,000. This figure becomes even more impressive considering that only 25% of every purchase of the Battle Pass (seasonal in-game features and cosmetic items that players can buy) goes to the prize-pool. 

To illustrate there are only a couple of traditional sports that offer larger prize pools. The most notable are the Wimbledon or the Formula One. Even the Super Bowl is trumped by The International as the winning NFL team takes home a mere $11 million. In the eSports world no other tournament has offered a prize pool so large, the only tournament that has come close is the League of Legends 2016 World Championship which offered $5 million. 

Gaining the competitive edge

At this level of competition every tiny bit of advantage can mean the difference between winning and loosing. This is why lately players have been looking at the external factors that affect their game. Mainly the hardware they are using to directly interact in the game. The two main hardware parts are computer mouse and keyboards. If you are a die hard fan of a certain team, you can now decorate your gaming setup with high performance gaming peripherals from Steel-series made in collaboration with some of the best Dota 2 players in order to assure the best specification and features in the industry.

If you are a fan of team EG looking to create a cool looking setup or a up and coming professional  player looking to gain that tiny bit of advantage Steel-series has come out with a very promising line of gaming peripherals. 

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