League of Legends World Championship Prize Pool Cruises Past $4m
After finally opening up the League of Legends World Championship prize pool to crowdfunding this year, Riot Games is seeing quite a bit of success. The prize pool for the League tournament currently sits at around $4.1M, which is a bit more than double the original prize pool seeded by Riot. As players purchase the "Championship Zed" and "Championship Ward" skins, 25% of the gross purchase price will be added to the prize pool. This is the first world championship tournament for League of Legends that is utilizing crowd funding for its prize pool. Beyond the initial success, some simple back of the envelope math shows that this has been tremendously profitable for Riot as well. $2.015m has been added to the prize pool from skin sales, which means $8.06M of these skins were sold (25% of $8.06M is $2.015M).
Dota 2 pioneered crowdfunding for eSports prize pools with their "Compendium" with the 2013 "The International" tournament where the prize pool reached $2.8M. The 2014 tournament had a $10.9M prize pool, $18.4M for 2015, and $20.7M for 2016. Dota 2's remarkable crowd funding success for eSports prize pools shows what the future may look like for League. In fact, given that League of Legends has a playerbase that is multiples in size relative to Dota, an even larger prize pool can be expected in coming years.
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Omer's Take: I expect the prize pool for next year and the years thereafter to be materially higher than this years, as this is the first year Riot is experimenting with crowd funding. The fact that they raised over $2M with one champion skin and one ward skin is impressive. Next year's offerings should be more comprehensive (additional skins and perhaps even a compendium like item). A compendium like item would get me super excited about League tournaments, but this has been impossible given the limitations of the game's client (build on Adobe Air back in 2008). Fortunately, a new client has been in the works for some time now that may make a compendium like item possible.
