The League of Legends World Championship prize pool has increased to $4 million thanks to fan contributions, following the conclusion of the tournament’s group stage.
Last month developer Riot Games announced a change to its esports infrastructure, which now—for the first time in League history—sees 25 percent of the sales of both the Championship Zed and Championship Ward skins add to the overall $2.1 million prize for Worlds. Additionally, each team is also receiving 30 percent of the sales from team icon purchases.
Instead of piling said sales figures on top of the tournament’s prize pool, however, the amount contributed by fans will instead be distributed according to the following breakdown.
1st place: 40 percent
2nd place: 15 percent
3rd/4th place: 7.5 percent (15 percent total)
5th-8th place: 4 percent (16 percent total)
9th-12th place: 2.25 percent (9 percent total)
13th-16th place: 1.25 percent (5 percent total)
While paling in comparison to Dota 2’s long-standing tradition of crowdfunding its world championship, which this year lead to the International 6’s prize pool exceeding $20 million, the fact that the prize pool is already close to doubling indicates the efficiency of crowdfunding in competitive esports.
