- Dota 2’s TI11 prize pool just hit $10 million
- This is low compared to previous years’ events, compared to the same time
- TI11 might not be able to break its own records compared to last year’s TI10
Interest in Dota 2’s battle pass has dropped significantly, contributing to the relatively low The International 11 prize pool, compared to previous events.
TI11’s Prize Pool Reaches $10 Million
The concluding tournament of the Dota Pro Circuit, The International 11, is the biggest and most-anticipated Dota 2 event of the year. Fans will be treated to two weeks of intense competition between the world’s top teams. As the TI11’s start on October 15 nears, both the honor stakes as well as the prize money rise.
With the backing of continuous battle pass sales, the prize pool for the event has already surpassed $10 million. Despite the astronomical prize, however, TI11’s prize sum still lags behind several of Dota 2’s previous records.
The battle pass, which is the main source of revenue for the prize pool, was launched on September fist, and for the first couple of days, it has been keeping pace with both the 2019 and 2021 events. In fact, the total prize money surpassed $7 million in just the first 24 hours.
However, since the initial flood of battle pass purchases, interest seems to have slowed down quite a bit. Over the last week, 2022 sales have started dipping to the point where the graph is almost flatlining. If this trend continues, Valve might not be able to surpass the 2019 and 2021 record holders, which had prize pools of $34 292 599 and $40 018 195 respectively.
Battle Pass Sales Have Stagnated
As mentioned before, most of the money for the prize pool is gathered by selling battle passes. When we subtract Valve’s default prize pool contribution of $1.6 million, we get around $8 600 000 accumulated from battle pass sales, which is 25% of the total battle pass revenue since it opened on September 1.
This is almost $1.5 million behind TI9 and over $2 million behind the current record holder in TI10, taken for the same time. With battle pass sales slowing down significantly, the gap is expected to widen even more and Valve does not have much time to make up the rest of the sum.
One way Valve could fix this is by pushing more Level Bundles live on Steam for players to purchase. However, two months is not enough time for this battle to pass to raise over the $40 million mark, to reach the 2021 event. If players don’t suddenly express a lot more interest in the battle pass, which seems unlikely, this would be the first year that TI has not broken its record for largest Dota 2 and overall esports prize pool.
