1. League of Legends
- Lifetime Prize Pools: $64,086,925.61 (2212 Tournaments)
- Highest Earning Player: Faker (Lee, Sang Hyeok) $1,175,927.15
League of Legends was Riot Games’ answer to Valve’s popular MOBA Defense of the Ancients (DOTA) and its sequel, and the game has been vying for top-spot among the most popular and biggest earning esports in the world for years.
It goes without saying that to compete at the top level in League of Legends is serious business, and you’re going to need to join a team of dedicated professionals to earn anywhere near the amounts of the highest earning players.
League of Legends is played competitively at dozens of global tournaments, but the most notable is Riot Games’ own Championship Series. The series is similar to the Overwatch League in that all players are paid a set salary by Riot Games, and tournament prize earnings are just a bonus.
The salary structure is why the actual prize pools are a little less than DOTA, though still nothing to scoff at. The LCS 2018 final had a prize of $6.4 million. Elsewhere, minor third-party tournaments offer consistent prize pools of $10-$100,000.
