Around eSport-competitions, as well as around the traditional sports disciplines, an entire industry has emerged, including the sale of equipment (mice, headsets, pads, video cards) and clothing, paraphernalia, advertising, broadcast, etc. In 2020, the revenues of this market passed $1 billion, and in 2023 it is, according to the most conservative forecasts, will exceed $1.5 billion.

However, viewers, as a rule, are not interested in the income of companies-promoters and manufacturers of souvenirs, they are more interested in who among the players earns more. Well, let’s talk about the most profitable eSport disciplines for players.

Top 5 eSports CS GO tournaments 2022:

  • IEM XVII Cologne: July 5th – 17th, 2022.
  • ESL Pro League Season 15: March 9th – April 10th, 2022.
  • ESL Pro League Season 16: August 31st – October 2nd, 2022.
  • ESL DH Anaheim: February 11th, 2022.
  • ESL DH Dallas: June 3rd, 2022.

Cyber sports discipline CS: GO

CS: GO is the most successful discipline in cybersports, judging by the size of prize money and the number of tournaments. Immediately after the release of Valve was criticized for limiting the size of the prize fund for major CS: GO tournaments to the $250 thousand on the background of millions of prizes in Dota 2, so beginning with the MLG Major CS championships: Columbus 2016 sum climbed to $ 1 million and above. The biggest Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournaments are held by the same World Electronic Sports Games – $1.5 million, ELEAGUE – $1 million or more, Star Ladder, and others.

Unlike Dota 2, which is extremely popular in China, South Korea, and other East Asian countries, the best teams, the strongest players, and most fans of the game are in Europe. However, the first player in CS: GO, Peter Rasmussen from Denmark, with $1.9 million in winnings, is only 34th in the overall ranking.

CS: GO World Main Event

There are a huge number of tournaments per year, but there are hardly even a dozen really big, interesting, and eye-catching ones, but those are the tournaments that are worth a few and we will talk about them in more detail. The biggest tournaments that offer the most interesting list of teams and impressive prize pool are called Major tournaments. Usually, such tournaments are held at a certain time every year and in a certain place, and the well-known DreamHack also belongs to that list.

Over the past three years, there have been exactly three tournaments under the auspices of DreamHack. Each of them had a prize pool of $250,000 and was held in cities such as Jönköping in 2013 and 2014, and once in Cluj, Romania. Each time the Lan stage of the tournament gathered 16 teams of the top level. In 2013, Fnatic and NiP met in the finals, and NiP had to settle for second place. The following year NiP again reached the finals and again failed to win, this time, they were defeated by LDLC. The third DreamHack was even less successful for the Swedes, with EnVyUs and Natus Vincere meeting in the final.

ESL Major Series One

Since its inception, the tournament held five tournaments in the CS GO discipline and if the first four tournaments had the same $250,000 prize pool, the fifth tournament, held in July this year, the organizers collected a prize of $100,000. The tournament was twice held in Katowice, NiP reached the finals twice and twice lost to their opponent. The first time in Poland, VP took the tournament primarily due to the support of the audience, and the second time Fnatic was triumphant.

 The second city where the ESL tournament was held was Cologne. Three times the German city gathered the 16 strongest teams in the world and the first tournament was notable for NiP winning it, beating Fnatic in the finals. However, the following year NiP was not in the finals, while Fnatic not only played in the finals but won it, leaving behind EnVyUs. The last ESL tournament was held this year. This time, for the first place in the tournament with a prize pool of one million dollars, competed against very different teams – SK and Liquid. The Brazilian team was more potent and retained first place for several months.

BLAST Premier World Final 2021

BLAST Premier World Final 2021 rounds out the top five most popular tournaments of the year. Significantly, it was the last major CS: GO tournament of 2021. The NAVI Grand Final against Gambit drew a peak crowd of 727,38 thousand.