The International's crowdfunded prize pool grew from $1.6 million in 2011 to over $40 million by 2021 — then Valve changed the model, and the pools fell back to earth.
The International's crowdfunded prize pool grew from $1.6 million in 2011 to over $40 million by 2021 — then Valve changed the model, and the pools fell back to earth.
Sponsorship remains the largest revenue line at most esports organizations — industry analyses put it at more than half of team income — with league revenue share, prize money, and merch making up the rest.
T1's five-game win over Bilibili Gaming at the 2024 world final in London gave Faker a record fifth title and drew the largest audience in the game's history outside China.
Three wins advance, three losses go home, and a strength-of-schedule number picks your next opponent. A primer on the format that now runs esports' biggest qualifying stages.
HLTV's Rating and VLR.gg's Rating turn thousands of individual duels into a single number, and neither one works the way most fans assume.
Riot scrapped the Last Chance Qualifier and rebuilt the road to Champions Shanghai around Stage 2 Playoffs, Championship Points, and a funded on-ramp for Challengers teams.
Valve replaced invitation politics with a published formula and a staged bracket - here is what the standings count, how they convert into Major seats, and what the regional slot table really tells you.
A season-long points formula, not a single knockout qualifier, now fills the Counter-Strike 2 Major field — here's what actually moves a team up or down it.
No more one-loss-and-you're-out heartbreak in the group stage. Here's how the Swiss format actually decides who survives, round by round.
Riot's Season Capsule splits cosmetic revenue equally across every VCT team, a mechanism that pushed partner-team skin earnings past $44 million in 2024 alone.