The International 12 Will Take Place in Seattle, Washington
The International Dota 2 Championships (commonly called TI) is popular for having the biggest prize pool in the realm of eSports. In fact, the seven largest prize pools in history are all from TI. This is achieved each year by amassing millions of dollars through crowdfunding to distribute among the participants.
However, due to a reworked funding structure for this year’s tournament, the prize pool is historically low. And the prospect of improvement is very bleak. Earlier in the year, Valve announced that the traditional Battle Pass that crowdfunded the tournament would be removed. Instead, they introduced The Compendium, a new system that is more focused on the pro scene.
The players found the item underwhelming as it does not offer much for the price. 25% of all the sales still go to the prize pool of TI12, but so far, the sales are really slow. And there is no drastic change in the prize pool yet.
At the time of writing, it is currently sitting at just $2,462,425, after one and a half days of crowdfunding. As always, the initial prize pool began at $1.6 million, with Compendium sales contributing only $862,425 in additional funds.
In contrast to the trends observed since 2015, this represents the lowest increase after a day and a half. In 2015, the prize pool had already reached an impressive $4.1 million, surpassing the current 2023 offering by a significant margin. Even the prize pool for 2022 which marked the first instance of failure to surpass the previous year’s total had reached $7.5 million.
The concerning part is that the crowdfunding period of this year is significantly shorter than in previous years. It will stop when the final of the tournament ends and that day is only a month away.