At the time of writing, the contributions are almost at $10 million, with $1.6m having been the opening donation from Valve. That this was going to happen was forseeable from the opening day, as within 24 hours the contributions were at 5.8m, almost 2m above TI 2018’s opening day.

The current title holder for the heftiest prize pool is TI 2018, which reached $25,532,177 in total. This record is widely anticipated to be beaten this year as the pool has been steadily growing since the tournament began, and it’s looking extremely likely from the initial uptake that the difference between 18 & 19 will be notable.