Progamingtours.net did a short summary on various eSports and the prize money given away for the past year. Atop sits Blizzard's StarCraft 2 with more than $2.5 million, pushing Dota 2 and Modern Warfare 3 to second and third place, respectively.
SC2: Wings of Liberty proved not only to be the most profitable eSport for 2011 but also witnessed a major upscale in number of tournament held throughout the year. There have been 130 tournaments with larger than $1,000 prize pool (i.e. not counting weekly cups such as Go4SC2 or ZOTAC), compared to only 30 for year 2010.
With its total of $2,525,775 paid to professional eSports athletes, StarCraft 2 has a convincing lead ahead of the runner up DotA 2, the game that featured the tournament with the largest prize pool yet - "The International" with 1 million USD awarded to the gold winner. SC2 also outweighs the third place finisher Modern Warfare 3 more than 2.5 times as Activision's FPS sits at a number of $1,010,000.
"Regardless of what happens next StarCraft 2 has made esports mainstream", write PGT.net in their article.
Of course, one should have in mind that both Dota 2 and MW 3 had a later start in 2011 ("The International" was held August 17-21 and "Call of Duty XP" on September 2nd) so Blizzard's leading RTS will have a tough competition for 2012.
Links
Progamingtours.net - Source
