Esports Special Events

The best thing about Esports is that they can be played anywhere in the world. All you need is a fast internet connection to get in on the action, making the barriers to entry far less than you see in other sports. That has led to an explosion in the popularity of Esports over the last decade.

Esports are usually played in a LAN format, but the COVID outbreak forced everything to an online format. That didn’t completely upend the normal order of things with Esports as it did with almost every other competitive sport though, making Esports someone pandemic proof. This helped Esports reach new audiences in 2020, and the sky is the limit for the rest of the decade.

DotA 2 The International

The biggest event in Esports is DotA 2’s The International. This has the largest prize pool in all Esports, and the last four editions of this tournament have seen at least $20 million distributed amongst the teams that qualified. There wasn’t an edition of this prestigious tournament last year due to COVID and travel restrictions, but that will lead to an enormous prize pool in 2021.

DotA 2 has a massive international following. Teams from Europe, the United States, and China have won this event, and the 2019 edition saw 18 teams from six different regions represented. There were teams from China, Europe, North America, South America, Southeast Asia, and the CIS at this event, and the prize pool was a whopping $34.3 million.

The massive prize pool and outsized attention given to this competition leads to plenty of betting odds. There will be futures odds available for which team and which region wins The International, and there will be betting lines for each game and series with individual props along the way.

League of Legends World Championship

There is no question that the biggest Esport in the world is League of Legends. Millions of fans tune in to watch League of Legends each week, and this game has the biggest reach of any Esport. Currently, there are 11 different top-tier leagues for League of Legends, representing different regions around the world.

The four premier regions are China (LPL), Korea (LCK), Europe (LEC), and North America (LCS). The seven minor regions are Brazil (CBLOL), Latin America (LLA), Russia (LCL), Turkey (TCL), Japan (LJL), Southeast Asia (PCS), and Vietnam (VCS).

At least one team from every region makes it to the League of Legends World Championship each year, giving this competition a truly international experience. This is the most watched event in Esports with tens of millions tuning in at one point or another, and the viewership numbers in China are off the charts.

CS:GO Majors

Majors are the biggest events in CS:GO’s competitive scene. From 2013 to 2015, a tournament had to have a $250,000 prize pool in order to be classified as a major, and that number was raised to $1 million starting in 2016. There are only a few of these majors throughout the year, and that leads to intense competition among every team in the world to qualify for these events.

CS:GO is not as popular globally as DotA 2 or League of Legends because there isn’t much of a presence outside of Europe and the Americas. There is a pretty large following in those areas though, as first-person shooters have long been more popular in the Western countries.

Fortnite Tournaments

We’ve seen some pretty large Fortnite tournaments over the last few years. While this enormously popular game doesn’t have much of an Esports scene, when publisher Epic Games makes the decision to host a big tournament, it draws a lot of attention. Epic has stated it will award $20 million in prize money in 2021.

Sports Video Game Tournaments

Games like Madden and NBA2K have some hardcore fans. The competitive scene isn’t as robust with these games as it is for other games on the list, but the tie-in to physical sports opens up Esports to new groups of people. We saw a surge in popularity for simulated games in these franchises too when COVID shut down traditional sports for a good chunk of 2020, so there are more ways to get in on the action.