Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has a non-typical esports ecosystem where prize money playing a significant but not dominating role in top players’ earnings. There is no equivalent of The International with a largest prize pool of tens of millions. However, this doesn’t mean that there haven’t been tournaments with big money at stake in the game’s history. In this article, CS.MONEY Blog will talk about the biggest prize pools in CS:GO esports tournaments in one list.
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PGL Major Stockholm 2021
- Prize Pool: $2,000,000
- Winner: Natus Vincere ($1,000,000)
The first post-COVID Major marked not only the return of Major CS:GO tournaments but also set records for prize money. Valve decided to double the prize pool, explaining that there would only be one Major in 2021.
The tournament in Sweden was completely dominated by Natus Vincere, who took first place for the first time in the history of Majors without losing a single map.
WESG 2016 and WESG 2017
- Prize Pool: $1,500,000
- Winners: Team EnVyUs (2016, $800,000) and Fnatic (2017, $800,000)
The Chinese WESG tournament series was very ambitious. The organizers aimed to revive national team tournaments and, to attract the best players, offered the largest prize pool in a CS:GO tournament at that time. Unfortunately, people didn’t greet the idea how it was planned initially, and WESG didn’t become a Tier-1 event.
ELEAGUE Season 1 and ELEAGUE Season 2
- Prize Pool: $1,400,000 (Season 1) and $1,100,000 (Season 2)
- Winner: Virtus.pro (S1, $400,000), OpTic Gaming (S2, $400,000)
Amidst significant investments in esports, various companies were interested in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. ELEAGUE, organized by Turner Sports and WME|IMG, aimed to become a new major show on American television. They wanted the biggest scale possible: twenty-four teams, two months of competition, and over a million dollars in prize money. The complex system with a large number of matches resulted in the Golden Polish Virtus.pro roster winning the first season.
Next season, the organizers reduced the prize pool and invited 16 teams instead of 24. Everything started looking familiar and stable, and OpTic Gaming emerged as the winner, defeating Astralis in the Grand Finals.
BLAST.TV Major Paris 2023 and IEM Rio 2022
- Prize Pool: $1,250,000
- Winners: Outsiders (Rio, $500,000) and Team Vitality (Paris, $500,000)
The last two Majors had an increased prize pool compared to what we were accustomed to see previously. Valve provided a quarter-million dollars more at stake, but this increase had little impact on the teams’ motivation. More important was to become the champions, while money could also be earned through stickers.
We have written separate articles about the tournaments themselves. For example, you can find articles about skins used by Paris Major Champions, or the moments from Rio Major worth becoming a documentary film.
Bonus: Intel Grand Slam
- Prize Money: $1,000,000
- Winners: Astralis, Team Liquid, Natus Vincere, FaZe Clan (all received $1,000,000)
In conclusion, we will talk about a not-quite-tournament-related but pleasant monetary prize for teams that have dominated for a considerable period. Teams had to win four of the biggest international tournaments within ten attempts to claim one million dollars. Four teams have won this significant prize, and the competition for the fifth million is just beginning and will likely extend in CS2 tournaments.
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