Since the beginnings of esports, prize money has driven the best of the best to compete around the world in many different titles. The earliest league, the CPL or Cyberathletic Professional League, hosted games such as Quake, Warcraft, and Counterstrike. These tournaments paid relatively small amounts of money, but the fan bases grew stronger and more competitive. These tournaments spiked interest to teams in Asia and Europe and gave birth to a plethora of competitive esport titles. Warcraft III, Starcraft, and Counterstrike prize pools were being funded and organized by tournament organizers such as Intel Extreme Masters and Major League Gaming. Prize pools increased from a few thousand dollars to 20 to 50 thousand. This allowed many gamers to pursue serious careers in esports. MOBA games have been at the forefront of prizing in the past few years. DOTA 2’s The International has had the largest prize pools at over 20 million dollars in the past couple of years. League of Legends has developed salary style payment systems on top of their million dollar prize pools for professional teams.

Recently, Epic Games has announced how they will be advancing Fortnite into the competitive scene. The company posted on their site that the 2018-2019 season would be given 100 million dollars for prize pooling. The amount they have dedicated toward the competitive scene would completely topple all other esports in terms of prize money. Many esports teams have focused their efforts toward constructing teams specifically for Fortnite’s upcoming competitive scene. Epic Games has said they will be taking a different approach to their competitive scene which may mean more amateur tournaments where any player can make it big. Epic will be announcing their plans within a couple of months, be on the lookout to see if you can win your share of the 100 million dollar pot.