Tournament organizer Arena Online is launching a new amateur League of Legends tournament series for the 2016 year that will feature a $1 million prize pool.
The Texas-based company next year will host four invitationals and two weekly events for amateur players of all levels and will individually pair players to make the event fair.
Its first bout will be a crowdfunded $25,000 tournament called the IndieGoGo Inaugural.
“We are using this crowdfund to bring in serious beta gamers, not just bug testers,” Arena Online CEO Alan Hubbard said. “We have other groups testing for bugs daily; we need competitors willing to be the first to test our model for incentivized esports.”
Arena Online’s entrance into the amateur tournament organizing space is unique for the amount of prize money it plans to distribute. While most other amateur tournaments, such as Victorious Gaming and ESL’s Go4LoL, feature payouts in League’s virtual currency, Riot Points, or small cash prizes, Arena Online is offering $4,000 to the winner of its first tournament.
The beta, however, will feature daily and weekly tournaments that reward players with Riot Points. Its launch is projected to be around the beginning of November, a company representative told the Daily Dot. But the model will switch from Riot Points to cash as it heads into 2016 with bigger events.
The company recently made headlines when it merged with professional League side Team Dragon Knights and announced that it plans to compete for the North American Challenger Series in Spring 2016.
Image via Riot Games/Flickr | Remix by Jacob Wolf
Check out our coverage of the League of Legends World Championship 2015.
