The International 3:
$2,874,407 (USD) From August 7 to 11, 2013, at Benaroya Hall in Seattle, Washington, Valve’s third annual Dota 2 tournaments, The International 3, had a total of 16 teams facing off in the finals with a record-breaking grand prize pool of nearly three and a half million dollars. With the huge growth in popularity the MOBA genre has been seeing over the last couple of years, it’s not surprising to see this year’s prize pool is almost twice as large as last year’s. Since Dota 2 is a free-to-play game, the only way Valve can financially support The International 3 and continue to host future tournaments is through microtransactions from the players. In addition to this, Valve gave away over $1,000,000 worth of gear from their store, which included peripherals, computers, etc. With so much being given away to the fans, Valve was able to increase the prize pool by just over $400k. Even if you aren’t a Dota 2 player or don’t have any intention of playing, watching The International 3 is definitely worth checking out just for all of the exciting matches and crazy in-game moments. Even if you missed the dota 2 tournaments youou can watch the entire tournament in the Dota 2 game client on-demand or view highlight videos on YouTube.
The International 2:
$1,600,002 (USD) From August 31 to September 2, 2012, at Benaroya Hall in Seattle, Washington, Valve’s second annual Dota 2 tournament broke the record for the largest single prize pool in e-sports history at nearly two million dollars. Like last year, The International 2 had 16 teams competing in the finals, with 11 of them receiving an invite based on their performance during the year leading up to Valve’s first Dota 2 tournaments. Unlike last year, this time, Valve invited 5 additional teams from around the world who competed in a qualifying tournament to fill the remaining spots. Although the following strategy proved to be extremely successful and increased viewership and hype surrounding the qualifiers as well as The International 2 itself. Once again, like last year, Valve had a shop set up where they sold their own merchandise along with Dota 2 items from other companies such as Razer and Kingston HyperX. With the incredible prize pool, which was over 1.6 million dollars, it’s no surprise that fans were willing to purchase these items and increase the prize pool further. Everything considered The International 2 managed an enormous amount of success in every way possible for Valve and Dota 2 fans alike.
Dota 2 Asian Championships:
$1,200,000 (USD) From February 17 to 19, 2015, in Shanghai at Mercedes Benz Arena, the Dota 2 Asian Championships had a prize pool of 1.2 million dollars spread across five major regions: Europe, North America, South East Asia, China and Korea. This tournament was hosted by Perfect World and MarsTV, with 16 teams from around the world competing in the finals. Some of these teams, such as Team Secret and Invictus Gaming, are household names when it comes to professional Dota 2 tournaments. Like with The International 3, MarsTV is providing an English stream of the event on their Twitch channel for free. Also its still too early in the dota 2 tournaments to decide who will most likely win, but if you’re looking to support your favorite team, you can purchase their own “team pack” through the Dota 2 store. Each of these packs comes with an announcer’s pack along with a courier, ward and loading screen. Buying all of these items will give 12% of the revenue back to the Dota 2 Asian Championships prize pool, so make sure to do your part and support the teams participating in this tournament.
This concludes our list for now, but there are plenty more tournaments along with qualifiers that are taking place in 2015 that will greatly increase the prize pool for Dota 2 Tournaments.
