Stats corner: Money Matters

Although new to the scene, Koreans were treated with quite a bit of money in the first quarter as March saw the start of The Champions Spring, which would not only be the biggest tournament for the first three months but also third in the yearly ranking of best paying tournaments after S2WC and The Champions Winter. Playing on home turf, the Korean teams ended dominant and left the foreigners in the face of Fnatic and CLG down in the top eight, essentially snatching the better part of the prize pool for themselves.

Meanwhile in Europe, most of the money came from the two IEM events, Kiev and World Championship but as the competition and winnings were equally split between EU and NA teams, none of the region even came close to what Koreans were pocketing.

The next two quarters passed with North America on the top of it all, mostly due to the large prize pools of IPL 4, MLG Spring Championship, IPL Face Off and MLG Summer Championship attended almost exclusively by NA teams. The first season of the GPL (in May) and IEM Poland plus S2WC EU Regionals helped Asia and Europe to get second places in Q2 and Q3, respectively, but the competition had a clear winner: these were the months when the NA scene bloomed.

Q4 was when things got disgustingly skewed with the help of the 2 million of S2WC, $100,000 of IPL5, the $70,000 of WEM and the $56,000 of Tencent Game Arena which delivered the 50% pie share to Asian teams. IEM Cologne and Singapore and DreamHack Winter were held to put some money into European and Korean pockets but ultimately, nobody came close to challenging TPA’s and WE’s winnings.

Another thing that Q4 marked was the decline of the North American scene, something that became a hot topic of discussion towards the end of 2012. With the exception of their own regionals, NA teams were almost nowhere to be seen and finished last with just $193,000 of winnings after these richest on money three months.





Thanks to their eventual The Champions Spring win, Azubu Blaze topped the Q1 chart, leaving the European terror Moscow 5 $20,000 behind. with the Korean scene not getting the same publicity at that time of the year, however, most of community’s attention did fall on the Russians, who were very much unbeatable in the first three months of 2012, banking $65,000 of prize money.

The second quarter marked TSM’s rise to power, one that would keep them on top of the scene for almost half a year. Signing Dyrus in mid March was apparently a huge step for the Americans and the boys under Reginald’s captainship left all the competition behind in Q2 (almost doubling WE’s winnings) and finished close second to M5 in Q3, earning almost $122,000, putting them second in the most winning teams ranking for the first nine months of competition.

We already talked about the skewness of Q4 so there’s no point delving deeper into the topic and analyzing all the “Oh my god, how do we beat the Asians?!” cries. Nevertheless, admirations must be awarded to CLG.eu, who managed to make fourth in the rankings, playing exemplary in every tournament they attended and pocketing $190,000 without ever finishing first outside LSC 2.





With everything previously said in mind, we take a look at the big picture: where do the quarterly prize money stand in regard to each other, which regions were most successful for the entire 2012, which teams won the most and which months were the most profitable in the grand scheme of things.

The yearly prize money distribution per region pie chart (shown below on the right), shows very expected results: Asian teams are way ahead of the others but the important note that Europeans are not that far behind must certainly be made. In fact, had it been not for the S2WC anomaly, the difference between Asia and Europe would be almost insignificant. At the same time, seeing Europe ahead of Korea in terms of winning (despite mostly coming from the richer on tournaments foreign scene) is something to keep foreigners’ heads up high: not every penny is going east.

As seen on the chart to the right, S2WC was quite the gift for TPA and it’s very much the only reason the Taiwanese team made the top 15 as $30,000 of non-WC winnings would place them quite low in the overall picture.

Azubu Frost, M5, WE and CLG.eu are coming in to complete the top five, all with less than $3,000 difference between each other which for six-digit sums is practically nothing. TSM is the only other team that broke the $200,000 line, owing a large part of that to their excellent Q2 and Q3 performance. Breaking down the top fifteen down to regions gives us 4 Asian, 3 Korean, 4 European and 3 North American teams, essentially mimicking the percentages in the “Yearly prize money distribution per region” chart. It’s curious to also mention that those 15 teams hold 76% of the total earning for 2012.

Finally, the two bar charts below give us the monthly distribution of prize money both counting and excluding S2WC and for everyone following the scene, the trends are to be expected. The year started slow with the exception of March (which had IEM Worlds and The Champions Spring to elevate its numbers to high heavens), had a very strong June-August summer period, slowed down in September as everybody prepared for S2WC and exploded in October and November, seeing the conclusion of the premier tournament season with IPL 5.




The data is collected from a total of 73 premier and major tournaments as seen on Leaguepedia. For tournaments spanning over more than one month, the start date is taken when calculating monthly and quarterly prize money.