Adam has worked as a writer and editor for five years on sites such as CasinoBeats, OddsChecker, Esports.net, CoinTelegraph and Gambling Industry News. Adam uses his experience in the gambling and gaming adjacent industries to focus on emerging stories at the intersection of esports, culture and gambling.
Olivia Richman is a seasoned esports journalist who has worked with Inven Global, Esports Illustrated, Esports.gg, and more. As an editor and writer at Esports Insider, she loves telling unique esports stories, especially within the FGC. When not working and gaming, Olivia loves collecting Kirby plush, eating sushi, and driving her cars at the track.
The International brought together the top 16 Dota 2 teams in the world, with Team Vision lifting the Aegis of Champions. The total prize pool was $3.32 million, but the top 10 traders at Polymarket earned over $5.3 million between them.
Team Vision took home $1.46 million as it joined the list of winners to lift the trophy since 2011. The prize pool reached a record $40 million in 2021 as Valve added a quarter of every dollar spent on Battle Pass cosmetics into TI’s prize pool.
In 2023, Valve retired that model and spread gameplay updates throughout the calendar year, resulting in a huge crash in prize money.
The crash of prize money and rise of prediction markets mean it can now be more profitable to trade the game rather than play it.
Playing the market, rather than predicting the outcome, was the main source of profit. In total, the tournament attracted trading from 21,936 Polymarket wallets. Of these, 5,004 accounts made over $7.5 million by both buying and selling positions.
For the other 16,932 accounts, the outcome was decided at settlement, and collectively, they finished $7,611,971 down, according to analysis by Predictbook .
“So 77% of everybody who touched this tournament had their result decided by who won the match, and as a group they funded the 23% whose result was decided by trading the market,” said Afik Rechler at Predictbook. “Being right about Dota turned out to be worth considerably less than trading it.”
One account made over $400,000 simply from trading positions. It traded only six markets, made 17 trades in total, and was in and out within 13 hours.
A total of 1,640 accounts deposited $157,553,967, accounting for over 86% of all trading volume. The largest 220 accounts, almost exactly the top 1%, accounted for 72.8% of the total value. One account alone generated over $21 million of the volume, around 12% of Polymarket’s overall volume.
This indicates high levels of automated trading, with bots rapidly trading positions during live games to capture microscopic movements or market rebates.
Casual esports fans predicting the outcome generally lost out. The median winner made only about $4.84, while the median loser lost $23.15.
These small losses funded the accounts running algorithms, hoovering up any price discrepancies to guarantee profits. A total of 8,836 accounts lost less than $1,000 during the tournament, with 906 losing more than $1,000. A further 5,258 finished level, with 6,652 winning between 0 and $1,000. The remaining profits went to 734 accounts.
Image Credit: Predictbook Polymarket and Kalshi take millions in fees Predictbook also highlighted that over the course of the tournament, traders moved $182 million based on the outcomes at Kalshi and Polymarket. The latter accounted for 90% of the trading vo…