Earlier this year, tournament organizer Alex Jebailey tried something new for the fourth installment of his Community Effort Orlando event series. By partnering with Teespring, he allowed members of the scene to directly support their favorite games by purchasing items from an exclusive line of shirts, tank tops, and hoodies. The money collected for this apparel would then be used to increase the prize pools of whichever official game the patron chose.

This novel idea sparked a bit of discussion about how this avenue could be used to raise the payouts at future events, and it appears as if one of our scene’s biggest will be taking a page right out of Jebailey’s book.

Capcom recently announced that they too have decided to work with Teespring, and will be using a model similar to Community Effort Orlando 2014’s to boost the pot at Capcom Cup later this year. While their starting foundation of $50,000 is already a much larger amount than the fighting game community is used to seeing, a portion of the money earned from this campaign be turned around to raise that figure even higher.

Teespring’s official Capcom Pro Tour store currently features a limited lineup of clothing for folks to choose from, both for the overall circuit and this weekend’s premier event, VSFighting 4. If you’re interested in contributing to Capcom Cup’s prizes, be sure to head on over and check it out for yourself.

As of now, the initial $50,000 will be split between first ($30,000), second ($15,000), and third ($5,000) place finalists.

Capcom Cup is scheduled to take place in San Francisco, California sometime this December.

Source: Capcom via NeoGAF