In the time after the new year, the inaugural Dota Global Official Event, known as the TI series, dazzled the world once again.
This was the first event, where players fought their way through various regional qualifiers and then gathered in China, eventually leading to competitions between 16 teams.
The reason they came all this way was for the high prize money of this year: a base prize of ten million renminbi, and a community-funded pool from global merchandise sales totaling 9.02 million renminbi, summing up to a total of 19.02 million renminbi.
In the history of electronic sports, such high prize money was unprecedented. In 2006, when the parallel world had not yet a clear concept of esports or a mature gaming industry, for Qinghe Games to provide 19.02 million as prize money for an esports event was a tremendously audacious move.
In this world, the esports industry had a much higher starting point than in the previous one.
