• Log InLog In
  • Register
Liquid`
Team Liquid Liquipedia
EDT 20:11
CEST 02:11
KST 09:11
  • Home
  • Forum
  • Calendar
  • Streams
  • Liquipedia
  • Features
  • Store
  • EPT
  • TL+
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Smash
  • Heroes
  • Counter-Strike
  • Overwatch
  • Liquibet
  • Fantasy StarCraft
  • TLPD
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Blogs
Forum Sidebar
Events/Features
News
Featured News
[ASL21] Ro24 Preview Pt2: News Flash10[ASL21] Ro24 Preview Pt1: New Chaos0Team Liquid Map Contest #22 - Presented by Monster Energy18ByuL: The Forgotten Master of ZvT30Behind the Blue - Team Liquid History Book20
Community News
$5,000 WardiTV TLMC tournament - Presented by Monster Energy2GSL CK: More events planned pending crowdfunding3Weekly Cups (May 30-Apr 5): herO, Clem, SHIN win0[BSL22] RO32 Group Stage4Weekly Cups (March 23-29): herO takes triple6
StarCraft 2
General
Quebec Clan still alive ? BGE Stara Zagora 2026 cancelled Blizzard Classic Cup @ BlizzCon 2026 - $100k prize pool Weekly Cups (May 30-Apr 5): herO, Clem, SHIN win Rongyi Cup S3 - Preview & Info
Tourneys
GSL CK: More events planned pending crowdfunding $5,000 WardiTV TLMC tournament - Presented by Monster Energy Sparkling Tuna Cup - Weekly Open Tournament RSL Season 4 announced for March-April Sea Duckling Open (Global, Bronze-Diamond)
Strategy
Custom Maps
[D]RTS in all its shapes and glory <3 [A] Nemrods 1/4 players [M] (2) Frigid Storage
External Content
The PondCast: SC2 News & Results Mutation # 520 Moving Fees Mutation # 519 Inner Power Mutation # 518 Radiation Zone
Brood War
General
ASL21 General Discussion so ive been playing broodwar for a week straight. BW General Discussion Gypsy to Korea Pros React To: JaeDong vs Queen
Tourneys
Escore Tournament StarCraft Season 2 [Megathread] Daily Proleagues [ASL21] Ro24 Group F [BSL22] RO32 Group B - Sunday 21:00 CEST
Strategy
Fighting Spirit mining rates Muta micro map competition What's the deal with APM & what's its true value Simple Questions, Simple Answers
Other Games
General Games
Stormgate/Frost Giant Megathread General RTS Discussion Thread Starcraft Tabletop Miniature Game Nintendo Switch Thread Darkest Dungeon
Dota 2
The Story of Wings Gaming Official 'what is Dota anymore' discussion
League of Legends
G2 just beat GenG in First stand
Heroes of the Storm
Simple Questions, Simple Answers Heroes of the Storm 2.0
Hearthstone
Deck construction bug Heroes of StarCraft mini-set
TL Mafia
Mafia Game Mode Feedback/Ideas TL Mafia Community Thread Five o'clock TL Mafia
Community
General
US Politics Mega-thread Russo-Ukrainian War Thread The China Politics Thread European Politico-economics QA Mega-thread Trading/Investing Thread
Fan Clubs
The IdrA Fan Club
Media & Entertainment
[Manga] One Piece [Req][Books] Good Fantasy/SciFi books Movie Discussion!
Sports
2024 - 2026 Football Thread Formula 1 Discussion Cricket [SPORT] Tokyo Olympics 2021 Thread
World Cup 2022
Tech Support
[G] How to Block Livestream Ads
TL Community
The Automated Ban List
Blogs
Loot Boxes—Emotions, And Why…
TrAiDoS
Broowar part 2
qwaykee
Funny Nicknames
LUCKY_NOOB
Iranian anarchists: organize…
XenOsky
ASL S21 English Commentary…
namkraft
StarCraft improvement
iopq
Electronics
mantequilla
Any Web Designers Out there?…
sob3k
Customize Sidebar...

Website Feedback

Closed Threads



Active: 1925 users

Starcraft 2 Event Prize Distribution - January

Forum Index > SC2 General
Post a Reply
1 2 Next All
Thrie
Profile Joined May 2011
United States24 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-01-29 04:30:09
January 29 2012 01:19 GMT
#1
Event Prize Distribution
[image loading]



Small Events
[image loading]


What you see above is a presentation of data that has been collected and presented by the awesome Liquipedia volunteers. The charts show the distribution and trends in award money since launch. A gut check against the gold standard of SC2 prize winnings, sc2earnings.com shows that players with over $1,000 in winnings have combined for about 80% of all winnings. Seeing as premier events account for approximately 75% of all prize money, I feel pretty good about the data.

I think that the data show some interesting things for the Starcraft scene.

First is that prize money is still growing, if at a bit of an uneven pace.

Second is that there are seven organizations that are really providing a lot of the financial incentive for players. It is no coincidence in my view that GOM is awarding the most money and that most of the best players either live in Korea or try to go there to train.

The last bit of info that stuck in my mind was that small events account for almost 25% of all winnings. It takes a whole lot of dailies to award the same amount of money as even one season of the GSL.

Edit: Update to show NASL and ESL correctly in Organization chart.
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
TrickyGilligan
Profile Joined September 2010
United States641 Posts
January 29 2012 01:21 GMT
#2
Cool stuff, I hope this does something to reduce the amount of "esports bubble" and other such negative posts I've been seeing recently. It looks like stead growth to me, instead of something unsustainable.
"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it." -Groucho Marx
Muffinman53
Profile Joined November 2010
571 Posts
January 29 2012 01:28 GMT
#3
Thanks so much for putting all of this information in one place. This is awesome :D
Sabu113
Profile Blog Joined August 2009
United States11077 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-01-29 01:31:44
January 29 2012 01:30 GMT
#4
Very nice thank you. Once again as everyone has already stated, it's incredible how little MLG had to invest last year compared to what they got and their rivals.

edit: It would be interesting if we could add estimated invite cost to MLG. (but then IPL gets some +s too I believe)
Biomine is a drunken chick who is on industrial strength amphetamines and would just grab your dick and jerk it as hard and violently as she could while screaming 'OMG FUCK ME', because she saw it in a Sasha Grey video ...-Wombat_Ni
ChuCky.Ca
Profile Joined July 2011
Canada2497 Posts
January 29 2012 01:35 GMT
#5
thx so much for this very good look at prize money
Most Skilled Current esport Games Scbw>Sc2>Cs1.6>Dota2>Hon>Loopin Louie The Drinking Game>LoL
Angel_
Profile Blog Joined December 2011
United States1617 Posts
January 29 2012 01:46 GMT
#6
Oh there are graphs with colors and shit all up in this humpty dumpty.

Thank you for this information.

"It is no coincidence in my view that GOM is awarding the most money and that most of the best players either live in Korea or try to go there to train."

- I kind of disagree with this thought however. Certainly it's an incentive, and definitely also a benefit, but the best players are in Korea regardless of the money being there because the best players are the Koreans, simply because of everything about how they live and practice.

If the money weren't there, it would still be the case.
DarkPlasmaBall
Profile Blog Joined March 2010
United States45458 Posts
January 29 2012 01:49 GMT
#7
This is a fantastic compilation! Thanks so much for this

I'm sure we'll continue to see an increase in prize money over the next year, although I'm curious as to how MLG's new format may affect it.
"There is nothing more satisfying than looking at a crowd of people and helping them get what I love." ~Day[9] Daily #100
Thrie
Profile Joined May 2011
United States24 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-01-29 01:58:30
January 29 2012 01:54 GMT
#8
On January 29 2012 10:46 Angel_ wrote:

"It is no coincidence in my view that GOM is awarding the most money and that most of the best players either live in Korea or try to go there to train."

- I kind of disagree with this thought however. Certainly it's an incentive, and definitely also a benefit, but the best players are in Korea regardless of the money being there because the best players are the Koreans, simply because of everything about how they live and practice.

If the money weren't there, it would still be the case.


I think that GOM can award that kind of money because the people and players there are so in to the game (maybe just gaming in general). I think that you're right that the players didn't all decide to move there because of prize money, but that they were already there. I think that in this case at least, the money followed the interest!

Edit:Misquote!
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
MrCon
Profile Blog Joined August 2010
France29748 Posts
January 29 2012 01:55 GMT
#9
Amazing post Thanks a lot. Didn't knew ESL gave the same amount of prize money as MLG, sick.
Lonyo
Profile Blog Joined December 2009
United Kingdom3884 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-01-29 02:02:14
January 29 2012 01:59 GMT
#10
What period is the moving average line in the monthly prize money graph based on?

Also nice work. I had calculated a rough low end estimate of prize money a bit ago and came out with $3m+, nice to have a more comprehensive total rather than the crap in the advertising thread by some site talking about top e-Sports by prize money.
HOLY CHECK!
DarkPlasmaBall
Profile Blog Joined March 2010
United States45458 Posts
January 29 2012 02:02 GMT
#11
On January 29 2012 10:55 MrCon wrote:
Amazing post Thanks a lot. Didn't knew ESL gave the same amount of prize money as MLG, sick.


$242,000 to $172,000? Hardly the same...
"There is nothing more satisfying than looking at a crowd of people and helping them get what I love." ~Day[9] Daily #100
LunaSaint
Profile Blog Joined April 2011
United Kingdom620 Posts
January 29 2012 02:04 GMT
#12
I feel that there really needs to be more small events and playhem/go4sc2 style dailies. They're a really nice way of granting smaller players some reasonably serious BoX experience. ...granted they get past the horrible Bo1 segments.

That, and they can provide some good content during quiet areas of the season. Did anyone see atnCloud vs FXOLucky?
KicKDoG
Profile Joined December 2003
Sweden765 Posts
January 29 2012 02:06 GMT
#13
Is this really accurate? if so. Nice job
http://www.twitter.com/KicKDoG_LoL baylife plox?
Bagration
Profile Blog Joined October 2011
United States18282 Posts
January 29 2012 02:06 GMT
#14
This is awesome. Thanks for doing this, and making it so visually easy to understand.

This would be a great way to show people new to competitive SC2 how Sc2 is growing as a competitive Esport.
Team Slayers, Axiom-Acer and Vile forever
Thrie
Profile Joined May 2011
United States24 Posts
January 29 2012 02:12 GMT
#15
On January 29 2012 10:59 Lonyo wrote:
What period is the moving average line in the monthly prize money graph based on?



That is a second order polynomial over all of the monthly data.

I struggled a bit with how to show that, but I feel that it fits the best given the seasonal nature of many of the premier events. I also didn't want a the December lull in a few of the big events to misrepresent the overall trend (this is especially considering that I used the start date, not the end date or when most of the games were played for logging tournament dates).
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
MrCon
Profile Blog Joined August 2010
France29748 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-01-29 03:35:20
January 29 2012 03:34 GMT
#16
On January 29 2012 11:02 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
Show nested quote +
On January 29 2012 10:55 MrCon wrote:
Amazing post Thanks a lot. Didn't knew ESL gave the same amount of prize money as MLG, sick.


$242,000 to $172,000? Hardly the same...

Yeah the font is too small on my monitor and I read 272.000$.
And I also read ESV and not ESL, that's why I thought it was sick.
Perseverance
Profile Joined February 2010
Japan2800 Posts
January 29 2012 03:45 GMT
#17
This is awesome, thanks for putting in the hard work to gather all this data into some pretty informative charts. It kinda makes me excited to see what the prize pools will look like a year from now.
<3 Moonbattles
dAPhREAk
Profile Blog Joined July 2010
Nauru12397 Posts
January 29 2012 03:49 GMT
#18
jesus christ! that is a lot of money. awesome to look at; thanks for putting together.
Xeris
Profile Blog Joined July 2005
Iran17695 Posts
January 29 2012 03:52 GMT
#19
You missed NASL Season 1 in July O_O ... also NASL has awarded >$200,000 in prizes , not sure why it's not listed there pretty much anywhere ...
twitter.com/xerislight -- follow me~~
Torte de Lini
Profile Blog Joined September 2010
Germany38463 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-01-29 03:59:37
January 29 2012 03:59 GMT
#20

Second is that there are six organizations that are really providing a lot of the financial incentive for players. It is no coincidence in my view that GOM is awarding the most money and that most of the best players either live in Korea or try to go there to train.

The last bit of info that stuck in my mind was that small events account for almost 25% of all winnings. It takes a whole lot of dailies to award the same amount of money as even one season of the GSL.


2. Also demands the most amount of cost/expenses, no? If not, the competition is higher and so the work or effort is a lot harder/demands more from the person.

3. Skill ceiling is lower and most of the tournaments can be done in the entirety of the day.

The big winners are the smallest slices because they offer the most with the least amount of time (3-4 days of competition). The demand of skill or experience however is up for debate.
https://twitter.com/#!/TorteDeLini (@TorteDeLini)
1 2 Next All
Please log in or register to reply.
Live Events Refresh
The PiG Daily
20:15
Best Games of SC
Rogue vs TriGGeR
Maru vs MaxPax
Rogue vs herO
Clem vs herO
Rogue vs Maru
PiGStarcraft528
LiquipediaDiscussion
[ Submit Event ]
Live Streams
Refresh
StarCraft 2
PiGStarcraft528
JuggernautJason87
StarCraft: Brood War
Britney 10746
Shuttle 389
NaDa 23
Dota 2
canceldota264
capcasts234
monkeys_forever231
Counter-Strike
taco 351
C9.Mang0228
minikerr6
Super Smash Bros
hungrybox423
Other Games
gofns23515
summit1g15843
ViBE89
Maynarde78
PPMD19
ROOTCatZ10
RuFF_SC22
Organizations
Other Games
gamesdonequick731
StarCraft 2
Blizzard YouTube
StarCraft: Brood War
BSLTrovo
sctven
[ Show 15 non-featured ]
StarCraft 2
• RyuSc2 60
• OhrlRock 1
• AfreecaTV YouTube
• intothetv
• Kozan
• IndyKCrew
• LaughNgamezSOOP
• Migwel
• sooper7s
StarCraft: Brood War
• RayReign 37
• BSLYoutube
• STPLYoutube
• ZZZeroYoutube
Dota 2
• WagamamaTV969
League of Legends
• Doublelift4025
Upcoming Events
CranKy Ducklings
9h 50m
WardiTV Team League
10h 50m
uThermal 2v2 Circuit
14h 50m
IPSL
15h 50m
Hawk vs TBD
StRyKeR vs TBD
BSL
18h 50m
n0maD vs perroflaco
TerrOr vs ZZZero
MadiNho vs WolFix
DragOn vs LancerX
Sparkling Tuna Cup
1d 9h
WardiTV Team League
1d 10h
OSC
1d 12h
BSL
1d 18h
Sterling vs Azhi_Dahaki
Napoleon vs Mazur
Jimin vs Nesh
spx vs Strudel
IPSL
1d 18h
Artosis vs TBD
Napoleon vs TBD
[ Show More ]
Replay Cast
2 days
Wardi Open
2 days
Afreeca Starleague
2 days
Soma vs YSC
Sharp vs sSak
Afreeca Starleague
3 days
Snow vs PianO
hero vs Rain
GSL
3 days
Replay Cast
4 days
Kung Fu Cup
4 days
The PondCast
5 days
Escore
6 days
Liquipedia Results

Completed

Escore Tournament S2: W2
RSL Revival: Season 4
NationLESS Cup

Ongoing

BSL Season 22
ASL Season 21
CSL 2026 SPRING (S20)
IPSL Spring 2026
StarCraft2 Community Team League 2026 Spring
Nations Cup 2026
PGL Bucharest 2026
Stake Ranked Episode 1
BLAST Open Spring 2026
ESL Pro League S23 Finals
ESL Pro League S23 Stage 1&2
PGL Cluj-Napoca 2026
IEM Kraków 2026

Upcoming

Escore Tournament S2: W3
Acropolis #4
BSL 22 Non-Korean Championship
CSLAN 4
Kung Fu Cup 2026 Grand Finals
HSC XXIX
uThermal 2v2 2026 Main Event
RSL Revival: Season 5
WardiTV TLMC #16
IEM Cologne Major 2026
Stake Ranked Episode 2
CS Asia Championships 2026
Asian Champions League 2026
IEM Atlanta 2026
PGL Astana 2026
BLAST Rivals Spring 2026
CCT Season 3 Global Finals
IEM Rio 2026
TLPD

1. ByuN
2. TY
3. Dark
4. Solar
5. Stats
6. Nerchio
7. sOs
8. soO
9. INnoVation
10. Elazer
1. Rain
2. Flash
3. EffOrt
4. Last
5. Bisu
6. Soulkey
7. Mini
8. Sharp
Sidebar Settings...

Advertising | Privacy Policy | Terms Of Use | Contact Us

Original banner artwork: Jim Warren
The contents of this webpage are copyright © 2026 TLnet. All Rights Reserved.