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Best Esports Events

Sports are such a big thing in the world, that it is no surprise that they came to the gaming sphere in its own form: esports.

Tons of games around the world have begun to have their own events, with different skill levels and prizes that have reached several dozen million US dollars in prizes. These have garnered a large following, with countless people around the world watching the event live through different streaming services or even in the event itself. Some gamers have even taken to betting on these events with peers, or websites like on footballwhispers.com.

Interested? Find out which are the games with the best events, whether you want to go see them live yourself, or just participate in the sport-hype.

#1 - League of Legends' "World Championship"

League of Legends is a massive game, with 180 million players, it actually has a more active userbase than Steam itself. For a 5v5 game fighting against all of the million games present in Steam, that is one of the greatest achievements.

Of course, due to this, it's no surprise that it has one of the biggest esports events in the world. The winner of the GOTY award for best event, the World Championship is an annual event in which 24 teams come together to beat the crap out of each other in the Summoner's Rift in an attempt to win. Last year, the event took place at the Laugardalsholl Sport Center in Iceland's capital of Reykjavik, with a prize pool of $2,225,000 (£1.6 million roughly). This event is massive and shakes the world to its core every year.

#2 - Dota 2's "The International"

Remember how I was saying that League of Legends has more active users than Steam? Well, Valve's MOBA, Dota 2, certainly deserves a spot on this list.

Not only is Dota 2 still a massive game with several hundred thousand players any given day nearing the million mark, but it also has broken several records with its astonishingly high prize pools. These numbers are so high in fact, that 2021's event, The International 10, had a whopping $40,000,000 (roughly around £29,000,000).

These numbers are only all the more shocking when you realise that these prize pools aren't acquired through sponsorship or the like, but instead, Valve uses a crowdfunding event in which the money goes to the prize pool. So the increasing number of several million dollars being given as prizes is really a testament to how well Dota 2 is doing in any given year.

In fact, The International does so well every year, that when looking at the overall largest prize pools for these events, the top 10 include The International a whopping seven times almost in a row, beginning all the way back to The International 4 with the prize pool of $10.9 (roughly £8.0) million, only being interrupted once by Fortnite's 2019 World Cup Finals.

#3 - Overwatch's "The Overwatch League"

Whenever I think of esports events, three games tend to come to mind: League of Legends, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and Overwatch.

Shooters tend to make for some of the best esports events, some of which I won't be able to cover today, but given that massive hit games such as Fortnite and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive have such prominent events, it isn't a shock that Blizzard's take on the character-based team-oriented shooter genre is one of the greatest events present each year.

20 teams compete to get prizes as high as $1,500,000 for first place.

#4 - Counter-Strike: Global Offensive's "Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Major Championships"

With an esports event equally as big as its name, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive continues to amaze fans of the game with massive esports events that continue to amaze several years after its original back in 2013.

As of 2018, 24 teams compete head-on throughout several rounds. With a prize pool that increased from its original $250,000 (around £184,000) to a whopping $2,000,000 (around £1,400,000), Counter-Strike: Global Offensive's Major tournaments continue to grow to this day.

We hope that esports continue growing. Not only is it a great sign as to how prominent and capable videogames have become, but also because the events are incredibly fun to follow and cheer for one team, even if by accident you're voting for two different teams confusing them and thinking they're the same.