Why is the Dota 2 prize pool so significantly greater than the LoL pool?
Seeing as League has 30x more daily users than Dota, has more people watching the LCS, and making 6x more money than Dota, why is the LoL prize pool so small in comparison?
4 Comments
Because DotA doesn't play its players a salary like LoL does.
Their are other reasons too.
Well, Riot realizes where valve is going to go wrong. The Dota prize pool was pretty much funded by the players, every purchase they made in game a small percentage of the cost would go to the prize pool. When the prize pool reached certain amounts, valve would release stuff in game. For example, skins, map features, HUD skins...etc. Those types of things. So that's how the Dota prize pool got so large.
As for league, well the league prize pool really has no reason to be that high. A couple million is enough, and Riot never has to worry about running out of prize money, they will always have the funds to give teams equal prizes every year. Now, the Dota prize pool may be getting larger and larger every year, but, what happens when the players stop spending money, or even worse, players start to play the game less and valve loses a quarter of his funding? Well, the prize pool will start getting smaller and smaller every year, yeah League has way more players than Dota, so Dota putting out like fricken 16 mill a year for their pros won't last very long. Even if Riot wanted to put more money into prize pools there really is no need, it's just a waste of money, the Pros are already happy, and are getting paid enough.
They give teams over 250K in funding They have better production. Watch tournaments from other games and you will see the difference in quality. MSG tournament for 2 days is expensive as hell. They constantly do this
Valve doesn't pay the players a salary to play. That prize pool is the ONLY money they get, and only if they win, whereas LoL players are guaranteed their salary at least even if they lose.
Also, the DotA prize pool is directly funded by the players. I don't remember exactly how it works because it's been a while since I looked it up, but there's something specific you buy with real money where like 50% of the proceeds from purchasing it go towards the DotA prize pool. I think it was a like a compendium of information about the tournament itself, the people competing in it and what not. Kind of a fluff purchase for no real purpose other than to specifically donate money to the prize pool.