Valve Announces Dota 2 The International Prize Pool Distribution

The International 2023 will use a slightly different prize pool distribution this year compared to previous iterations and payout every team that attends the event. This includes an increased % drop for every team behind the champions.

As in previous years, the TI champions will take home 45% of the total prize pool, with 12% allocated to the runners-up, while the third and fourth-placed teams will take home 8% and 5.5%, respectively.

The International is known for two things – as the most prestigious Dota 2 event of the season and for its massive prize pool. However, while it has retained the former tag, TI12 seems like it won’t be remembered as a very lucrative tournament. 

Less than a week before The International knockout stage begins, the tournament’s prize pool has barely passed the $3 million mark ($3,023,105), which is surprisingly low. It took TI12 17 days to reach $3 million, which sounds like a lot, but it’s still over $9 million behind where TI11 was in the same timeframe. In fact, TI12 is set to have the lowest total prize pool since 2013 ($2,874,380).

Even though there’s still plenty of time for the prize pool to increase beyond $3 million and potentially even reach $4 it doesn’t seem like the total pot will come even close to $10 million, which would mean that The International 2023 will have the lowest prize pool in a decade.

The International 2021 holds the world record as the most lucrative single-event esports tournament in history at $40,018,400. It also marked the final The International to have a larger prize pool than the previous iteration.

The International prize pool has historically increased every year, going from $1,6 million in 2011 and 2012 to $2,874,380 in 2013, $10,923,977 in 2014, $18,429,613 in 2015, and broke the $20 million mark in 2016 ($20,770,460).

Since then, TI prize pool has continued to grow and reached $30 million in 2019 ($34,330,068) and broke the $40 million mark in 2021. Last year’s TI, however, only reached $18,930,775.

The drop in the TI prize pool largely has to do with The TI12 Compendium, which doesn’t offer as many cosmetics and other goodies to incentivise players to buy it. This, in turn, resulted in a significantly lower TI prize pool, which directly affects the importance of the tournament, and it could potentially lead to TI losing its status as the most prestigious Dota 2 event.