The prize pool of The International 2020 (TI10) has now passed the US$30 million mark, which means it now has the second-highest prize pool for a single tournament in all of esports.
It took just 62 days and approximately eight hours since the release of the TI10 Battle Pass for the prize pool to grow to this point, according to the Dota 2 prize pool tracker.
For comparison, TI9’s prize pool — which holds the record for the highest prize pool in all of esports with a whopping US$34.3 million — was hovering at just above US$26.4 million by this point of its own crowdfunding period.
The Dota 2 community has contributed over US$28.4 million to the prize pool so far through sales of the TI10 Battle Pass thus far, while the remaining US$1.6 million was provided by Valve as the base prize pool.
TI10’s prize pool is also the fastest-growing in the history of the tournament by far. It took only two days and 19 hours for its prize pool to hit US$10 million and 30 days for it to grow further to US$20 million.
- TI10 Battle Pass: Every item in the Immortal Treasure I
- TI10 Battle Pass: Every item in the Immortal Treasure II
The astonishing speed by which TI10’s prize pool has grown can largely be attributed to its battle pass being the biggest one yet to be released by Valve. This year’s battle pass notably came with three new Arcanas, two Hero Personas, and a new Roguelike game mode called Aghanim’s Labyrinth.
With around 48 days remaining until the expected end of its crowdfunding period, TI10 seems set to break the prize pool record set by its predecessor once again.
But even if TI10’s prize pool is already set to be another record-breaker, the tournament itself won’t be happening this year after Valve announced in May that TI10 has been delayed indefinitely due to the ongoing COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
“After extensive consideration of the global health emergency stemming from COVID-19, we have made the difficult choice to delay The International. We have been exploring various date possibilities, but it is likely that the event will need to happen in 2021,” Valve said in a statement.
TI10 was originally scheduled to be held from August 18-23 in Stockholm, Sweden.
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