League of Legends 2014 World Championships prize pool smaller than anticipated

The League of Legends 2014 World Championships are scheduled to kick off next month with the group stages taking place in Taipei and Singapore. The winning teams will then travel to South Korea to play the remaining matches culminating with the final, which will be hosted on the FIFA Sangam Stadium. Most of the details regarding the schedule and group format were revealed earlier this year, but we still didn’t know anything about the prize pool until recently. Fortunately, a few days ago Riot made available the 2014 World Championships rule book and we can find all the details within. It turns out that the prize pool for the biggest League of Legends event of the year is a little bit underwhelming.

Riot is offering around $2.13 million this year, an increase of only $80.000 compared to last year’s event. I’m calling it underwhelming only because many of us expected a more substantial increase in prize money for 2014. I hate to make this comparison again, but Dota 2’s The International 4 featured the staggering amount of almost $11 million. Granted, the prize pool there started at only $1.6 million with the rest of the money being raised by the community via the Compendium. League of Legends doesn’t feature something like that so the prize pool was naturally going to be smaller, but now it just pales in comparison to its rival. However, over $2 million is certainly nothing to sneeze at and money isn’t everything at the end of the day. The International 4 final wasn’t all that spectacular so maybe League of Legends can put on a better show instead.

Out of the $2 million, $1 million will go to the team that emerges victorious from the grand final. Second place receives $250.000 while third and fourth places get to take home $150.000. The teams ranging from fifth place to eight place will each be awarded $75.000 with the rest of the money to be split among the teams competing in the group stages. Third place receives $45.000 and fourth place takes home $25.000 while first and second place get to advance to the quarterfinals and compete for a bigger prize. In case of a tie between third and fourth place, each of the teams will receive $35.000.

The first group stage starts September 18th and will end on September 21st with the second one to follow between September 25th-28th. Then, between October 3rd-6th we have the quarter finals and between October 11th-12th the semi finals. The League of Legends 2014 World Championships grand final will take place October 19th in Seoul, South Korea.