E-Sports! An event viewed by millions, and a revenue giant. However, despite the massive following, it's generally frowned upon by the larger sports community in general. Often being dismissed for ''Not being real sport'' and generally not being taken as seriously by most avid sports fans. E-sports is taking the world by storm, currently experiencing a peak in both viewership, as well as revenue generation. It's reached a point of extreme popularity, and the world is being forced to take notice.
A match at the Dota 2 International championship
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International champions
One of the most viewed e-sports in the world is a game known as Dota 2. The Dota 2 2017 International championship is currently in progress, and this year's prize pool is the largest it's ever been. At the time of writing, the total prize pool sits at $19,896,154 and it's steadily growing every day. Keep in mind that this is just the prize pool, and the total revenue is muh more due to the large amount of viewers attending the event, as well as watching it online. How many people exactly? Well, the 2016 Dota International saw about 142.8 million visitors during the whole event. However, it is not clear how many unique visitors were there. Despite this, that is no small amount of traffic. This viewership, coupled with the large amount of revenue that is generated by this tournament, makes it one of the biggest sporting events on the planet.
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E-sports might still be young in comparison to the rest of the sporting world, but it's definitely one of the cornerstones of the sporting community, within the modern era.