Russian Team Spirit esports club won The International, the annual competitive video gaming tournament, on Oct. 17.
The team consisting of two Ukrainians and three Russians won $18.2 million from a record prize pool of $40 million during the Dota 2 online game event in Bucharest. The International is the biggest esports event by prize pool and viewership.
The prize money will go to the Russian owners of Team Spirit and two players Ukrainians — Ilya Mulyarchuk, 18, and Miroslav Kolpakov, 21, which makes them millionaires.
Ukrainian player Mulyarchuk said in an interview that he could buy a house and “a home for his cat” with the prize money, while Kolpakov wants to buy a house and a car for his father.
As esports athletes, Mulyarchuk and Kolpakov have earned over $3.6 million each in prize money in total since 2020.
This is the second time in history that Ukrainian players have won The International. The country’s most popular esports club Natus Vincere, or NaVi, triumphed in 2011, in the inaugural competition with a mere prize pool of $1.6 million.
During the tournament, 18 teams, five players each, competed in an online game called Dota 2, created by the U.S. video game developer Valve. In Dota 2, esports athletes control characters with special abilities, who occupy and defend premises on a virtual map. The team, which first destroys the main building within its rival’s territory wins the game.
In 2021, The International, the world’s largest esports competition, was held without a live audience due to the coronavirus pandemic. However, esports athletes continued to play wearing face masks, while millions of viewers watched the tournament on the popular streaming platform Twitch.
The prize for Dota 2 players is growing every year as more people get involved in esports and contribute to the prize pool by purchasing in-game items such as equipment or special abilities for their characters with real money. In 2018, the prize pool was $25 million and reached over $34 million in 2019.
The International was canceled in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, Valve decided to hold the tournament without a live audience. It broadcasted the competition online in multiple languages, attracting millions of viewers. At first, Dota 2 athletes were supposed to play in Stockholm, but due to the issues with their visas, they relocated to Bucharest.
Russian esports club Team Spirit was founded in 2015 and earned nearly $20 million in prize money since then. Among its partners are the Ukrainian betting company Parimatch and Ukraine-based manufacturer of chairs for players DXRacer.
For Team Spirit, The International is a big triumph — no one expected the club will succeed in the competition, the analysts said.
The founder of Team Spirit, Russian esports player Nikita Chukalin, 26, is among the most influential people in the Eastern European esports industry, according to Forbes. Since the club was founded in 2015, it earned nearly $20 million in prize money.
Analytics platform Newzoo predicts that the global esports audience will grow to 578 million people over the next three years, while the industry’s revenue might grow from $957 million in 2019 to $1.6 billion by 2024.
European esports team Nigma celebrates its victory during the international Dota 2 tournament, WePlay! Dota 2 Tug Of War: Mad Moon, organized by WePlay Esports that took place during Feb.19-23 in Kyiv. The event that attracted over 295,110 viewers has offered a prize pool of $300,000. (WePlay Holding)
The future of esports in Ukraine looks promising too. In 2020, the country recognized the video game competitions as an official sport and their players as athletes, which wasn’t the case before.
Local esports experts told the Kyiv Post that Ukraine can become a European Mecca for esports: it has high-speed internet with affordable prices and professional esports teams like NaVi, which are recognized around the globe.
