Esports has long been a respected discipline in the international arena. Yes, there are many people who shout that “this is not a sport at all - they sit at computers, do not move!”. Most often you can hear this from the older generation. What then is chess? Not a sport? Or maybe it's not a sport? Has poker ceased to be a sport? And mind you: all these sports disciplines do not include a single physical exercise- only mental.

One could argue that strategic thinking is trained in chess, tactics are developed, but in RPGs or shooters, you just kill enemies, and that's it. It is a myth. In fact, in the games for which the competition is held, the strategy is also calculated to bypass the opponents; it develops its own unique tactics. It just happens a little differently than in the classic mind games, which involve the mind, not the body. In addition, games develop a reaction not only to large but also to small events, and the player who notices all the details has an advantage over a less observant opponent.

And now the cherry on top: the prize pools. There are also people who think that only football players can earn millions of dollars a year, while the rest work for hundreds of thousands, and gamers are fighting for a couple of thousand dollars. Is it really?

In this article, we will tell you about the prize pools of various gaming tournaments and find out if people are right with this opinion or not. The article will mainly present data for 2017, since many of the 2018 championships will only be held in a few months, and their prize fund still shaped by companies and audiences.

CS: GO

The ELEAGUE Major 2018 tournament was held from January 12 to 28. A large number of teams participated in it, of which only 8 made it to the group stage, and the prize pool was $ 1 million. For CS: GO, such a prize pool is very large, considering that most of the tournaments are held for a couple of hundred thousand dollars. The matches were held in the format of the Swiss system + single-elimination. The American team Cloud9 became the winner of the tournament, winning 500 thousand dollars. The second place was taken by FaZe Clan, which received 150 thousand dollars.

League of legends

The 2017 League of Legends World Championship ran from September 23 to November 4, 2017. The championship was attended by 24 teams, matches were held in a 5 by 5 format on the "Summoners' Rift" map. The winner of the championship was the Korean team Samsung Galaxy, the second place was also taken by the team from Korea SK Telecom T1. Oh, these Koreans: since the first "Starcraft" they have held the leading position in the games in the MOBA genre. The prize fund of the championship was $ 4.6 million. The championship winner received $ 1.7 million. The runner-up team earned $ 600,000. Agree, very good money!

DOTA 2

The International 2017 had the largest prize pool in 2017, with a total of almost $ 25 million, 5 million more than in 2016 and 23 million more than in 2011, when the first The International was held. Yes, DOTA 2 is the most popular species e-sports, and here guys who can play well and well, earn a lot of money. The championship was held from 7 to 12 August 2017, and 18 teams took part in it. The first place in the championship was taken by the team from the Netherlands Team Liquid, which won (just imagine!) $ 10.8 million. The second place was taken by the Chinese team Newbee, which earned $ 3.9 million. These are the prize pools! Now you are convinced that big money is spinning not only in the sport where you need to run fast, jump high and lift heavy objects?

Overwatch

Despite the fact that the Overwatch League - Season 1 is not over yet and it is not clear who will be the winner, we will still tell you about this tournament. Its prize pool is impressive: $ 1.7 million, of which $ 300k goes to the first-place team, while the second-place team will receive $ 200k.

The fact that the Overwatch tournament is not over is a chance for you to earn money without participating in the competition. You can get good money on bets at the Leon.ru bookmaker. There you can also place bets on upcoming matches on CS: GO, LOL, DOTA 2 and other games in which competitions are held. Moreover, the odds are even more profitable than in classic sports disciplines, since the outcome of the match is almost impossible to predict in advance, except for those cases when outsiders play with the favorites of the tournament. Thanks to this, you can place bets with odds of 1: 4, 1: 6 and even more. In addition, on Leon.ru you can place bets on other sports: for example, on the World Cup, tennis, hockey, and so on.

Outside championships

Before the championships (and after them), the guys from the e-sports teams need to live on something. All official teams are paid by their sponsors. So, for example, it is not worth explaining who is the sponsor of the winners of the Samsung Galaxy LOL championship. And the salaries there are far from minimal: the guys have something to live on, something to upgrade their hardware and what to go to regional competitions. Also, a good part of the budget of teams is advertising products: for example, computer hardware, clothes or drinks. Therefore, if you love the game in which world championships are held and want to make good money, then show yourself. And perhaps you will go to a tournament with a prize pool of several million dollars, because all the participants in the competition started the same way as you - with simple matches over the network.

Millions in esports

The general director of the Ukrainian Natus Vincere (NaVi) Yevgeny Zolotarev told RBC that the announcement of a $ 100 million prize fund may be promising, but so far it looks like a hype. “Esports is growing globally by 30% per year, but there are nuances. Each [game] publisher has its own ecosystem. League of Legends is growing, Dota 2 is not, CS: GO is going smoothly, ”Zolotarev said.

After Epic Games announced a $ 100 million prize pool, potential players, coaches and investors will understand that Fortnite “has some kind of future, they will be able to make money, the game will have sponsors,” said Gevorg Hakobyan, an expert in the gaming industry. “In this regard, Epic Games has set the bar that will hinder other Battle Royale games that have the potential to become an esports discipline. We can say that they made it clear to the players that they are No. 1 not only now, but at least for the next year, ”Hakobyan stressed. Fortnite, as a competitive discipline and the leader in views of the video streaming service Twitch, has a chance to become one of the recognized esports games, agrees the producer of the cyberspace esports holding Marta Mishina.

Esports in Russia

Active investment processes in e-sports with the participation of Russian entrepreneurs began in 2015. Then the company Super Evil Megacorp, which developed the multiplayer online game Vainglory, received $ 26 million from a consortium of investors, including Russian businessman Yuri Milner. The businessman Alisher Usmanov also started investing in e-sports. His USM Holdings record $ 100 million in the development of the Virtus.pro group of companies.

On its basis, ESforce Holding was created - one of the largest esports organizations in the world. In May 2017, in Moscow, it is the largest esports arena in Russia - Yota Arena.

At the beginning of this year, two major deals took place in the Russian esports market. Mail.Ru Group holding ESForce. The deal amounted to about $ 120 million. And MTS is the Cypriot company Praliss Enterprises, which owns the e-sports club Gambit Esports.

Photo: Mikhail Tereshchenko / TASS

The level of investment attractiveness of esports is set by game developers and publishers, Nikita Bokarev, head of the media department of ESforce esports holding, told RBC. “Giants such as Riot Games, Valve and Blizzard are creating the gaming economy by growing their audience of solvent millennials,” he explained.

Sponsors - Visa, Aviasales, MediaMarkt, M.Video - began to show interest in cybersport in Russia and the CIS.

But Zolotarev admits that some sponsors who have recently entered esports don't know what to do with the gamer audience. “Partners do not know what is needed from the audience, or esports organizations are not always able to provide services of the level that they need,” Zolotarev summed up. So, in January 2017, the company Aviasales sponsored NaVi. Experts estimated the deal at about $ 200 thousand. But a year later, the contract was not renewed, Yanis Dzenis, PR director of Aviasales, told RBC and confirmed in the team.

“We decided not to renew our partnership with the NaVi team. During this year, we have barely learned how to work with the equipment that was supposed to be for the sponsor. It was clear from the start that sponsoring esports is not the same as sponsoring football club... It took us a year to figure out which tactics worked and which didn't. This differs dramatically from classic offline partnerships, ”said Dzenis.

He noted that, of course, it is worth investing in esports, but for this it is not necessary to become a sponsor of the team. “We found mechanics who work and pay off in our case, but realized that we did not need to be sponsors of the team. Just being a good marketer is enough. You can come to the tournament, to the broadcast, and if you have a good understanding of the media infrastructure of e-sports, then you can offer an integration system that is interesting to you, ”explained the representative of Aviasales.

Today, esports is a large and diverse community that includes players, fans, video game developers, analysts and streamers, tournament sponsors, news channels, websites and many others. To deny the fact that esports is now on a par with other professional sports is foolish. As in usual sporting events, there are disciplines in cyber sports that are very popular and loved by the viewer. How Soccer game famous world teams gathers millions of fans, so in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournaments millions of fans of the legendary shooter support their favorite teams.

CS GO tournaments, pro players and fans

Almost every day, CS: GO tournaments are held, both at the professional and semi-professional levels. Prize funds for matches start at $ 1,000, and the total funds of famous world tournaments reach several million dollars. Separately, it should be noted that over the past two years, the number of professional Counter Strike players has increased 2.5 times, and the community of shooter players has increased almost 5 times. This confirms that cs go tournaments continue to be interesting, entertaining and unpredictable.

The best world CS: GO tournaments

World Cyber ​​Games is the most anticipated and spectacular eSports tournament, which is a kind of analogue Olympic Games in the world of video games. Here professional gamers compete in various disciplines - video games for primacy, recognition and, of course, a solid cash prize. Counter-Strike is one of the main disciplines in this tournament for which competitions are held.

The Electronic Sports World Cup is a popular tournament held annually with a great show. Counter-Strike is also one of the video games that are played during matches. of this tournament... Some excerpts from the Electronic Sports World Cup are televised.

The Cyberathlete Professional League is professional league in computer sports, in which Counter Strike competitions have been held since 2001. Unfortunately, at the moment the league has ceased its activities, but the spectacular matches held here still impress the audience.

In this section of the RU.EGAMERSWORLD website, you can find out the schedule of cs go tournaments, view match statistics, track the nearest cs go tournaments, as well as view streams, videos and photo reports from famous tournaments.

A huge number of tournaments. A huge number of players. An incredibly huge community. Large prize pools. Millions of websites and video tutorials. But what is the real situation? How will the CS: GO esports discipline develop in the future?

• Tournaments and prize funds.
• Game servers.
• Conclusions.

Tournaments and prize funds.

Every day 1-4 tournaments are held in CS: GO with prize money from $ 1000. Esports players make big bucks with their organizations. Bookmakers are bursting with bets. But what does it really look like? Let's turn to the numbers and analyze the statistics.

In 2014, 274 CS: GO tournaments were held(these are tournaments with good prize pools, there are no small tournaments from VK, etc.). They were attended by 1338 players from all over the world. The total prize pool for 2014 from these tournaments was $ 1,953,795... This is the 4th place in the top games in terms of prize money, ahead of Dota 2, LoL, StarCraft 2. Every month we read in the news that a new major tournament is coming soon. Each organization was in a hurry to announce their plans for a new tournament.
And what happened during Counter-Strike 1.6! Esports as such did not exist yet. Nobody was really interested in the teams and in which tournaments they participate. However, in 2006, 55 Counter-Strike tournaments were held with 562 players... General the prize pool of these tournaments was $ 1,616,448... And this is the 1st place in the top prize games! In second place was StarCraft with $ 1 million less in prize money - $ 690,262.

What happens?

Yes, you read everything right. It turns out that the difference between 2006 and 2014 is only $ 300,000, and in fact there were 5 times more tournaments! So has the prize money really increased? Is the COP really growing in this regard? Or is he standing ...

It turns out that in reality there is really no CS: GO major tournament? Is the prize fund a criterion for the title of a major tournament? Many want and wait big tournament for CS: GO. Let's compare The International 5 in Dota2 and ESL One Katowice 2015 in cs: go.

• Prize pool - $ 18,500,000 vs. $ 250,000
• Participants group stage- 16 teams in both tournaments
• The finals were held in arenas
• Arena seats - Key Arena 16,500 seats versus Spodek 11,500 seats (ESL Cologne will have up to 20,000 seats)
• Spectators simultaneously watching the match - 4,600,000 (2 million last year) vs. 1,012,000 (how will it be online in Cologne?)
• The total number of viewers is 40 million versus 37 million.

Does the difference in prize money mean? Would there be more viewers if television (because of the huge money) turned its attention to this tournament, like to Dota 2? And if pro players were paid even more? Does Money Really Determine Scale? Or the event itself? Does the size of the prize really matter? Is this the engine of development? After all, only a small number of players get it ...

Pro players. How to become? Sponsors.

The number of professional players in 2 years has grown from 562 to 1338. If you look at the official statistics of Steam for 2012 (there are no statistics for earlier dates), we will see that played CS about 90,000 people, and CS: GO in 2014 - 500,000 people... I.e the community has grown 5 times, and the number of pro players has grown 2.5 times... I will not say good or bad. I would like to draw your attention to how easy it is for a player to become a pro player.

Conditions

First, several conditions must be met. You should have a lot of time to hone your game skills, to learn throwing lines, maps, tactics, spray control. You must have money to go to a normal LAN tournament. You may notice: there are online championships too! It is quite difficult to get to the online championship with good prize money (why I will explain a little later). Plus, you do not have the opportunity to communicate with other players asking them different details of the game, tactics, participation in tournaments. So that you have time for training and for travel, you stupidly need money, which not everyone has. Hence, you need a sponsor. This is where the biggest problem lies.

For organizations (sponsors) to invest in a no-name composition is a big risk for some reason. You are not sure how many games you will last in a tournament with their advertisements on various attributes, nicknames, or elsewhere. Accordingly, they do not know whether they will be able to earn money for you, or at least work off investments. If, nevertheless, you play and go up, then to organize through a short time a new problem appears. Players, seeing how others live, begin to demand more than they are worth, as players really are. And since cybersportsmen are not able to fulfill the contract for the requested money or the organization is not able to pay them this money, the result is that everyone diverges and you have to start over.

Search, study, train, wait for new players, which is quite expensive. Therefore, sponsors see one way out - to invest in those who are already playing and showing certain results. Thus, they have the opportunity to calculate the value of the players, their salaries, income from them. Economically feasible. This is where the impasse lies. Some do not want to risk their money, while others want something without realizing reality. That is why top teams are simply invited to good online championships and they do not search for nouns that it is not clear what they can show or learn.

Conclusion

simple - it is very difficult to get into pro-players even if you are a global elite. The only thing that appeared in recent times this is Faceit which has mini tournaments and access to a new tournament that they created specifically to find new talent together with pro players. And here are two sides of the coin. Access is paid, payment is monthly and you need to know English.

Cheats. Doping. Agreements. An integral part of development?

Per Last year there was a lot of information about cheats among professionals. Almost every month the news exploded with a stream of information about the VAC ban of the next "pro". The new anti-cheat system works. Probably there were a lot of them, it's just that now new search systems began to look better and ban harder. Does it help? No ... It's just that at the same moment other programmers are working and developing, who write better and better cheats. I do not mean those "bottom bots" that cut in AIM or BX and do not even think not to burn.

The information about the agreements also raised a wave of discussions in the community. Many of those who have not been caught? Nobody knows. But the precedent itself gives a reason to think about the rates and the reasons for this behavior among the players.

Doping. Investigation and doping tests for players. This is where games come in. Previously, playing in KS, Dotku in varick, Starcraft, no one could have thought that someone would start taking drugs to win.

A small pro-player opinion:

Conclusion... Why do professionals use cheats, doping, arrange Fixed games? And here the answer is obvious and simple ... Money, fame, success! They write, read, and gossip about them. They are deified. Therefore, there are so many who want to get into their ranks, but so few who can stay there. Games, like the drug business, generate huge revenues measured in tens of billions every year. To do this, players use all possible means, legal and not so, to stay afloat. Who cares about the simple development of the game? CS will leave, it will be replaced by another game and everything will go to the "evolutionary branch" of earning income from the beginning.

What is there for novice players?

For novice players, the threshold for entering the game is also not small. There are a number of problems. The first problem is training (instruction)... Tasks are dictated to English language without translation, at least with subtitles. The screen does not even show which buttons to press to sit down, take a weapon, open a door, and defuse a bomb. Intuitively poorly understood for a new player. The instructions do not even explain how to buy a weapon, a grenade, armor, jump, crouch, hold. Nothing! It seems ridiculous and fool understandable. But you judge others by yourself. Already playing and having experience. For example, after listening to the task to defuse the bomb, I ran around the map like an idiot and did not know what they wanted from me. But I just listened, and those who do not understand English? How should they be?

And here comes the second problem. All of these, as we affectionately call - noobs, go to play with us without even knowing how to buy a weapon and who to shoot. Now Valve has slightly corrected the situation by forcing players, before being allowed to enter the competitive mode, to first play up to rank 3 in public. But how much will it give them? And so the calibration of the title of a new player in a competitive match begins. And the matchmaking system throws them not always to the Silvers, but to the stars and to the Kalash, and so on. Especially if in which team there is a player of several ranks lower, then there is a great chance for opponents to get such a calibrated one. They begin to throw mud at him and kick him, for which he gets banned and upset.

But what is his fault? Is he to blame for the fact that the selection system threw him to you for calibration? Will this 10-12 year old person have the desire to continue playing? After all, it is quite possible that in 5 years he will surprise us with his skill at the World Championships? After all, Kennis, Olofmeiter, Edwart, Zeus, Senya, Getright and so on and so on did not appear out of thin air.

Conclusion just as simple - the threshold for entering the game is difficult and cruel.

Skins. Happiness, joy, purpose, reward. Is it all so?

When a beginner player gets a skin - he rejoices, brags, examines! Until he finds out that this is a consumer goods and, moreover, worn ... Then he begins to learn more and more. It turns out there is a marketplace where you can buy or sell them. And also csgolounge where you can exchange them or put them on a team and win more, or maybe lose everything. And the search for skins and money for them begins. But they are already waiting for him. Others, more experienced in this matter, try in every possible way to deceive, steal, hack. Everything appears more money and more and more wanting to steal them. Trading skins only in cs: go totals millions of dollars a year. Hundreds of thousands of people want more and more. But besides aesthetic satisfaction, there is no sense from them. They won't give you the same benefits as buying boosters at Hearthstone.

In fact, it all looks sad, since skins have become simply the subject of profit and earnings for many, many crooks and thieves. No one can now calmly change on the lounges without checking the deal 10 times. Money flows in and out. Valve takes 15% of the sale of the skin. It turns out buying a skin with your own money, when it passes 7 hands - Valve received 100% of the cost of the skin, and you got zero. Skins are just a sacrifice and loss business... Another divorce for the profit of another.

Game servers.

There are thousands of Counter-Strike servers of any version. If it makes sense and interest to create a server for old versions of CS, then for CS: GO there is no sense or interest now. When buying a server, you have nothing to stand out among the rest of the thousands of servers.

Than, besides the tick rate, your server is better than the official Valve server. The answer is: nothing! And vice versa, it's even worse... After all, according to the new Valve rules, your servers cannot have plugins with any skins. If you have them, they will soon ban you. And for unban, you need to turn everything off and wait for Gabe's mercy. The percentage of skin drops (albeit consumer goods) on Valve's unofficial servers has been drastically reduced. It turns out that now you cannot attract with either skins or drops. Moreover, you need to look for your server in the list of thousands of other servers. Now those who have been keeping the server afloat for a long time and it is in the bookmarks of other players because of acquaintances or access to the mod or the admin panel in order to kick and ban the unwanted ones.

It is easier for any player to press one button "Find a game" to select a mode and go for a drive without any delays and searches for your servers. For training or personal play? For this, there is also a closed game mode in cs: go. Why this is done is understandable. Valve wants you to buy skins, and not play on servers where they are available for free, and they don't care that due to the massive abandonment of servers, the entire load falls on their servers that are sick with a little trouble, ready to fall at any time and keep the load only in 64 tickrates so as not to die completely from the influx of players. That is, an ordinary ordinary player suffers again.

New engine and Valve's interest in the game.

Source 2 is just beginning to dream of us, like Half-life 3... Judging by a recent interview with Valve's development manager, as well as a myriad of topics on the Reddit forums from pro players, Valve doesn't give a damn about the principle of CS: GO development. As it goes, let it go. Why bother, because the money comes in?

For those who don't know, Reddit is the largest English-language forum for various games, where pro-players sit as well. Many have heard from Dota 2 players that IceFrog and the company itself are in their correspondence with them. I have never heard this from CS: GO professionals. And the recent reply of one of the game developers, on this forum, due to a simply awful bug (when a shot with AWP almost point-blank in the head did not kill), just blew up the topic, since no one could believe that finally someone from the company had come down to them in order to answer.

Conclusion again simple. Valve has no time and apparently they do not see why, something to change radically in the COP. After all, these are huge costs of both labor and money. We are waiting for changes in 2-3 years.

Conclusions.

The general conclusion is as follows. I remember a demotivator where there were such words: We used to play for fun, not titles and skins because of which we are only angry at each other. Of course, Valve did not completely abandon the project, but is engaged in it and develops it. But as it is, very little and a little depressing. Third-party organizations such as ESL, Faceit and the community itself invest more in the development and popularization of the game.

We won't see any serious development of CS: GO in the near future... The prize money has not increased much over 8 years. And everything else is business and profit from others. So just play for fun like the good old days!

Anyway. Pro-players and players, like a pro-scene and a pub with MM, are not comparable or confusing concepts. It turns out that for some, entertainment for others is real work with problems and worries, forcing you to cross the line in life for the sake of profit ...

Valve announced that the prize pool for all major official Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournaments in 2016 will be $ 1 million each.

Esports continues to gain popularity, the prize pools of the championships are growing every year, and now it's the turn of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. On the official game blog, Valve announced that the prize pool for all major CS: GO championships will now be $ 1 million, starting with Major League Gaming Columbus 2016.

Previously, the amount of prize funds in such competitions was limited to $ 250,000, so this year they have increased exactly four times. The company explains such generosity by the fact that lately the professional scene has "grown incredibly", and the increase in prize money was necessary.

CS: GO tournaments are now among the largest esports events in the world and are attracting multi-million dollar audiences around the globe. They attract significant profits and require large prize pools. CS: GO has grown as a professional eSports discipline, and our championships have become larger with it.

From this prize pool, the winner will receive $ 500,000.

However, this is far from record amount for modern esports. So, earlier Blizzard increased the prize pool of the Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft World Championship to $ 1 million. Do not forget that last year's The International in Dota 2 played out as much as $ 18 million!

Esports is growing by leaps and bounds and is getting closer and closer to traditional sports. However, there is an opinion that a number of reasons will never allow virtual competitions to be compared with real sports.

To understand the scale of these events, take a look at one of the recent CS: GO cyber finals.

Final of the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive 2015 tournament

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