There are national and international esports tournaments with serious cash prizes and real crowds who love the atmosphere of this growing social and sports scene. We’ll give you the details of the world’s six most popular esports tournaments below.
As the only mobile-based game on our list, M4 and M5 are up-and-coming tournaments for Mobile Legends: Bang Bang. The game we will now call Bang Bang launched in 2016, somewhat recently compared to the other games on this list, but is taking on giants in the esports industry. 2023 saw the M5 tournament grow to 5 million viewers, putting the tournament second only behind the League of Legends World Cup.
The money pool grew, too, with $800,000 awarded at M4 and $900,000 at M5. You can expect to hear more about Bang Bang in years to come since the game is relatively young. Given the extraordinary rise in mobile gaming, we wonder what games you’ll see played in future tournaments. We predict anything from Clash Royale to taking a spin at 5 on the Farm slot.
The acronym “Dota” stands for Defense of the Ancients, a popular add-on map and pack for Warcraft III. Dota is known for producing one of the largest prize pools in esports for a tournament called The International, which is put together by renowned video game software developer Valve. The prize pool reached a stunning $40 million in 2021, and the same event reached more than 2.5 million viewers.
The prize pool remains unique to Dota 2 because 25% of the funds from purchases like the Battle Pass go toward increasing the prize pool. Although the tournament only hosts up to 18 teams, it is big enough that it has been hosted in arenas worldwide over the years. In 2023, the best teams in the world were sent to Seattle, and in 2024, to Copenhagen, Denmark.
Dota 2 proves that esports can attract a crowd, with the Seattle tournament filling about three-quarters of the Climate Pledge Arena’s 18,000 seats. A gamer and journalist who attended the tournament said that people flew in from all over the world just to watch the championships, demonstrating the widespread excitement and influence esports have today.
League of Legends has a massive following, and the World Championship tournament organized by the game’s developer, Riot Games, is the peak of esports viewership. China hosted the 2017 championship, which filled the 80,000-seat Beijing National Stadium. Over the course of the tournament, 60 million people watched, with nearly 6.5 million tuning in for the title match alone.
The World Championship also offers plenty of prize money, with the most recent gathering providing over $30 million across three unique tournaments.
BLAST.TV’s Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament is a fairly recent addition to the esports world. It launched tournaments in 2020 with a focus on the Americas and Europe. Being new hasn’t stopped BLAST.TV from awarding big prizes for recent tournaments, though. A 2023 event hosted in Paris paid out $1,250,000.
BLAST.TV has shown that the battle between terrorists and counterterrorists draws viewers, as its recent events have had more than 15 million minutes of viewership.
Some games, like League of Legends, are popular enough to make our list twice. Much like the larger World Championship tournament, League of Legends game developer Riot Games organizes the Mid-Season Invitational to great success. Peak viewership, which often occurs during the final rounds, reached an incredible 2.3 million, especially impressive for a tournament that occurs between larger tournaments like the League of Legends World Championships.
The numbers may be higher, as JD Gaming, a China-based team, won, though esports companies were unable to provide accurate data about how many Chinese viewers were watching the tournament. The viewership could have been even higher!
With its third entry on our list, League of Legends shows its massive popularity and influence with LCK, a tournament focused on just one country, South Korea. LCK’s Spring 2024 tournament ended recently, and the competition has so far left other major competitive esports in the dust for the year, with over 72 million hours watched, beating the second-place PGL by over 10 million.
Competitive esports tournaments have come a long way from the LAN parties with CRT monitors on every desk in your friend’s basement. The best esports athletes now have the opportunity to play their favorite games with a chance to win some serious money while gaining fame within their niche, all while being seen and admired by millions worldwide. Meanwhile, we are just happy to see esports grow from a hobby to a real profession.
