StarCraft is often given credit as one of the the originators of the global esports scene and with good reason. The game has been a premier platform for competition world wide thru Battle.net, but perhaps nothing is as good of an indicator of how far the franchise has come and how much is invested in the pro scene than the recent report by Blizzard, which detailed a massive prize pool for 2016’s Championship series.
Blizzard’s report was left in a post on Battle.net which detailed the state of affairs for the StarCraft II World Championship Series in 2016, and it appears things are running quite well. The post detailed various changes and plans to make 2016 the biggest year for the tournament yet, not the least of which was the announcement of the prize pool, which is up over $2,000,000 as of this time, up from 2015’s $1,600,000
It might be noted that this isn’t as much as big of a pool as other juggernauts in esports. The crown still goes to DOTA who had over $18 million in their final prize pool for their 2015 Internationals, though that was after about $16 million contributed over the base of $1.6 million. Also, StarCraft II’s prize pool is actually coming up on League of Legends who had almost $2.2 million for their Worlds tournament. That said, a unique distinction is that StarCraft II prize pool is also going to singular competitors and not 5 man teams. Sure, there’s sponsors and all that, but the winners in StarCraft II’s tourney aren’t splitting their pot with five other active players.
That said, it’s an illustrious year full of big changes and multi-million dollar tournaments all around in esports. Good luck to all competitors and a big congrats to StarCraft and Blizzard on their latest milestone.
Want to see how the latest StarCraft II game held up? Check out our Legacy of the Void review here.
