Update: As of 10:20 a.m. ET on Monday, the prize pool has hit $24,829,162. Original story follows.
Dota 2 tournament The International has once again broken its own record for the largest prize pool in esports history, with a $24,789,473 purse as of Sunday.
The International 8, taking place in Vancouver, Canada, this weekend, crossed the threshold of $24,787,916 on Sunday night to give it the largest prize pool of any tournament across all of esports. It's the seventh year in a row that The International, the capstone event to the professional Dota 2 season, has put forth a bigger prize pool than it did its previous year.
The International began using crowd-funding through in-game microtransactions to bolster the tournament's prize pool in 2013. That year, the pot reached $2.8 million by The International's end, with developer Valve providing $1.6 million to the purse that year and each season since. The prize money provided by those transactions since 2013, however, has dwarfed Valve's contribution each year.
In 2014, the prize pool leapt to nearly five times the past season, at $10.9 million, thanks to $9.3 million in contributions. The next year, the purse climbed to $18.4 million total, with the trend starting to flatline the past few years.
This year's main event hovered around the trend line of The International 2017 but didn't pass the previous year's prize pool until the day before the tournament's main event, which begins Monday. It's the longest the crowd-funded pot has taken to surpass the past year's pool in the tournament's contribution era.
The five-person team and organization that win The International 8 will earn $10.9 million. The finals are scheduled to take place at 5 p.m. ET Aug. 25.
