The International 2019 has finally ended and, boy, it was a historic event for the entire Dota 2 community for a number of reasons.
If you think Fortnite champs are the only ones making traditional sports players look underpaid, then you probably haven’t met OG. The professional Dota 2 esports team has recently won Valve’s The International tournament. This is the second year in a row OG won Dota 2's top competition – the first time a team has won back-to-back!
Not only did OG set a new record, they also went home with a whopping prize of $15,603,133. This year’s TI reportedly obtained an overall prize pool of $34,292,599, which is already an achievement on its own.
According to an esports consultant named Rod Breslau, an equal split of the above-mentioned prize would allow each OG player to take home around $3.1 million each. To really give you a perspective of how massive this is, let’s take a look at Tiger Woods' 2019 Masters run. Sure, he won the tournament, but he only got $2.07 million.
Even the singles champions of Wimbledon, Novak Djokovic and Simona Halep, only went home with about $2.9 million each. It holds true that golf and tennis can bring more fame, but there is no doubt being a top-tier esports player can be a very lucrative career.
Even Team Liquid, the runners up of this year’s The International Dota 2 tournament, raked in a massive prize of $4,458,038. For context, each player is expected to receive around $892,000, which is not too shabby.
OG’s team members are Jerax, N0tail, Topson, Ceb, and Ana. Even before winning last year’s TI, they weren’t necessarily a favorite. In fact, many didn’t expect them to win TI8, especially since their DPC Season wasn’t close to being excellent. Nonetheless, OG prevailed and won the prestigious tournament. Even more so, they proved themselves to be a force to be reckoned with after winning this year’s The International.
It will be interesting to see how next year’s TI plays out. More importantly, fans should set their expectations even higher for OG. And with Ana’s surprising Io pick, for sure, pub games will be filled with players trying to carry their games using the hero.
