Ten years ago, gamers and professional players (although what kind of professionalism could one talk about then?) Could not even dream that at least one eSports discipline would be able to bring prizes comparable to real sports. And in two weeks, in July 2014, the DOTA 2 Championship will begin, the prize fund of which will almost certainly exceed $ 10 million. What's next?
The question of whether it is possible to compare eSports with real sports and even include it in the Olympic program was raised a couple of years ago when the championship from Valve was just gaining momentum. Then the amount of $ 1,600,000 for first place in five seemed fantastic, and today we are watching how, through the joint efforts of the Gabe Newell company and the gaming community, the prize fund approaches the mark of 10,000,000 dollars. And this is despite the fact that before the start of the main part of the tournament The International 2014 is almost a month away. The community rejoices: very soon the matches of your favorite teams can be seen almost on the main TV channel of the country.
Only for this tournament alone will teams receive more money than was played in all DOTA 2 competitions. The growth is almost exponential. How much is left cybersport to the rates of real sports? With whom can you compare the DOTA 2 world champions of 2014, who will almost certainly take at least $ 5 million in prize money?
According to dota.ru, the biggest money of the sports world revolves around FIFA and UEFA. The winning team of the UEFA Champions League receives about $ 50,000,000, and the winner of the World Cup in Brazil, which is about to start, will receive $ 35,000,000. But keep in mind that in football the application for the tournament is submitted by 25 people, and in DOTA 2 - five times less. And who is the winner now?
Go ahead. Together with The International 2014 Valve managed to beat such prestigious golf tournaments as The Open Championship ($ 8,800,000), The Masters ($ 9,000,000) and the PGA Championship ($ 10,000,000). The first The Open Championship was raffled in 1860, and the first The International - just three years ago. But you understand that golf is included in the list of Olympic sports, television occupies many countries of the world, and professional golf players have major contracts with sponsors.
In July 2009, the most famous cycling race of the world, the Tour de France, gathered about 44 million viewers. The prize fund amounted to $ 3,000,000, and the owner of the yellow jersey will receive about $ 616,500 this year. Each of the players of the winning team at The International 2014 will receive more. Bicycles are also part of Olympic sports.
As a rule, at the Olympics, the competition winners are not paid by the organizers, but by the government of the representative country. Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games are no exception. Most of all for their efforts received (in addition to fame, of course) Belarusian biathlete Daria Domracheva - 450 000 dollars. The remaining winners received much less. A dozen lucky payouts closed the Swiss skier Dario Cologna, receiving 178,000 dollars. Comparison with the Olympics may not seem the best, but keep in mind that this is an event of unprecedented significance that the whole world is watching.
And what about the USA? Basketball and hockey. And here TI4 breathes in the back of the most popular sports. The prize pool of the NBA Playoffs, for example, is $ 13,000,000 and is divided between the teams that participate in the playoffs (as in DOTA 2, in principle). The winners of the latest competitions received $ 2,300,000, which is two times less than the winners of The International will receive this year.
What is the secret? The fact is that the gaming community is thrown off for the winners prizes. Crowdfunding shows itself well in today's world realities. DOTA 2 players are given the opportunity to buy a so-called compendium for $ 10 (with further payments if desired), 25% of the purchase amount goes to the prize fund. Omitting how much Valve will have from holding this tournament, but the prize fund is growing by leaps and bounds. At the time of this writing, it is $ 9,426,435. More than 70% are fan donations. The winning team will receive 50% of the prize pool.
We go further. The Stanley Hockey Cup, which holds the organization NHL, takes 30 teams from the United States and Canada. In 2013, at the request of the NHL Players Association, the prize fund was doubled to $ 13,000,000. The winners (Chicago Blackhawks) received almost $ 3,750,000.
Volleyball, cricket, snooker, rugby, chess, judo, trampoline, curling, canoeing - all this is minor compared to DOTA 2. In any case, honest prizes for winning the main competition of the year speak of this.
If you, dear readers, still have distrust and doubt regarding the distribution of the prize money, let us move on to the question that concerns us most. Why are the top players of football, golf, basketball, tennis (by the way, Maria Sharapova won a little more than a half million dollars for winning the Roland Garros 2014) making millions of dollars a year? Why did golfer Tiger Woods declare $ 78 million over the past year?
The fact is that any sport is, first of all, a spectacle. And the names of the winners are sold for millions. Most of the earnings of a professional athlete comes from sponsorship contracts. Tiger Woods, for example, earned 65 million out of 78 solely on sponsors - EA Sports, for example, has released the Tiger Woods PGA Tour computer game for fifteen years in a row. David Beckham, Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo do not need additional advertising and, probably, are known to the majority by advertising, and not football activity.
The fact is that television is the main mechanism for gathering the audience in a particular sport. If the DOTA 2 championship were televised, players would be much more popular. Nevertheless, the championship from Valve, which is broadcast except in the in-game content and on a service like Twitch, is a representative of a new era of sports that does not need a TV. Every year the volume of advertising on the Internet is catching up and bypassing the volume of television advertising, and the day is not far off, when exactly eSports, which can be broadcast only on the Internet, will bring more money to the winners than football.
In the end, while hundreds of thousands of players are watching DOTA 2 games, tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, are watching TV. But Valve should be given its due - another revolution will take place in eSports this July, and TI4 and its prize will not be overlooked by a very, very large number of people.
Will you watch The International 4 games?
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