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An eSports team that just last week extended its partnership with PC monitor brand BenQ went on to win a record $6,630,109 million (£4,286,338) in a tournament on the weekend.
Evil Geniuses (pictred) picked up the top prize in the Dota 2 event known as The International, which handed out a whopping $18,416,970 (£11,906,497) in total throughout the entirety of the PC gaming competition.
The North American team defeated Chinese team CDEC 3-1 in the final taking place at Seattle’s Key Arena, with CDEC taking home $2.8 million (£1.8 million).
The prize pool is the largest in eSports. Fans funded the tournament by buying an item dubbed The Compendium, which unleashes in-game items and extras. One quarter of the proceeds from the sale of The Compendium, which starts at $9.99, go to funding The International, reports the Nvidia blog.
Only a handful of events — including the UEFA Champions League ($65 million in winnings), the FIFA World Cup ($31 million) and baseball’s World Series ($19 million) — reward winners more richly.
Around 20 million tuned in on Twitch, YouTube, Steam Broadcasting and WatchESPN to view the final.
Reports also say that the five winners from Evil Geniuses’ team – Fear, PPD, Aui, Universe and 16-year-old Sumail – are now millionaires, with the latter becoming the youngest millionaire in eSports.
Teams competed on PCs equipped with NVIDIA GeForce GTX GPUs and G-Sync monitors.
Evil Geniuses says it has worked closely with BenQ over the past year to equip its players with monitors including BenQ’s gaming-centric XL and RL series.
"Evil Geniuses is very enthusiastic to be continuing our relationship with BenQ," said Kelby May, VP of Accounts and Talent at GoodGame. "We choose to align ourselves with partners who are also at the top of their industry, and there’s a reason more eSports tournaments and teams use BenQ than any other brand.
"Last year we worked with their engineers and our professional fighting game players, Justin Wong and PR Balrog, to develop the first LCD monitor capable of meeting rigorous fighting game tournament standards. We hope to continue partnering on similar projects to push the industry forward."
Check out PCR’s upcoming September issue for a closer look at eSports and the changing PC gaming market
