Fortnite: Battle Royale will finally be making its big splash in esports this year, as the Fortnite World Cup Finals will have a whopping US$30 million prize pool — the biggest in the history of esports.
According to the announcement by Fortnite developer Epic Games, the top 100 and the top 50 Duos teams from the qualifiers will be battling it out in New York City from July 26 to 28 — with the Solo Cup champion walking away with $3 million.
Epic has not yet revealed how much the winning Duo will win in the Finals. However, they added that they will be hosting additional events that will feature custom challenges in different modes and formats.
Just making it to the Finals guarantees players at least US$50,000, but they will have to first go through the Online Open qualifiers. There will be ten of these running from April 13 to June 16, with US$1 million on the line for each week.
As for the rest of the year, Epic assured that they will continue to award US$1 million in cash prizes for weekly tournaments with a wider variety of modes and formats. The developer will also be providing tournament tools and prizing to select partners to “better serve competitive Fortnite in more countries and regions around the world.”
The Fortnite World Cup Finals’ US$30 million prize pool will be the biggest in esports history so far — beating out Dota 2’s The International 2018, which has a prize pool of US$25.5 million.
Epic is able to fund the Fortnite World Cup’s massive prize pool thanks to the massive amount of revenue its smash-hit game pulls in. In 2018, the developer raked in US$2.4 billion in profits and is making an estimated US$300 million per month from this year, according to the research firm SuperData.
Given the sheer popularity and transcendent influence of Fortnite, there should be little surprise it would be willing to give away that much money in esports. With how such a spectacle can give the game even more publicity, we can only expect Fortnite will only get bigger from here.
