Dota 2’s biggest winners don’t play Dota 2 anymore, they trade it

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. 

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 volume.

Kalshi has seen a huge rise in esports trading this year, but still trails behind Polymarket overall. CS2 and League of Legends continue to dominate the volume on both platforms, but Dota 2 is far more popular on Polymarket than Kalshi. 

This resulted in Polymarket taking just over $2.3 million in fees over the course of the tournament. Kalshi, meanwhile, collected $450,000. 

Sports markets continue to account for the majority of trading volume on the platforms, although, as shown in the International, most of that volume is inflated by trading bots. For those bots to be profitable for the institutions that run them, casual fans must also deposit their money. 

This week saw more moves on the legal front, with the Ninth Circuit unanimously ruling against Kalshi. The Third Circuit previously ruled in favor of the company, creating a circuit split. This sets up a potential Supreme Court showdown. New Jersey has appealed the Third Circuit decision to SCOTUS, which could eventually decide whether sports markets can continue on prediction market platforms.