Dota 2's Salary Problem: Why More Team Exits Could Follow TI2026

The professional Dota 2 ecosystem has reached an uncomfortable point in 2026, which is not all too different from what the broader esports scene has been experiencing in the last few years. The reality is this: being a successful team is no longer necessarily enough to make operating that team a sustainable business. As the time for The International 2026 is here, fans cannot help but wonder why more and more teams are leaving the scene. 

HEROIC withdrew from competitive Dota 2 in May, citing long term financial sustainability concerns. Team Secret had already placed its Dota division on indefinite hiatus in February, while Wildcard Gaming left the Dota 2 scene in late 2025. Since then, the warning signs have multiplied. paiN Gaming returned to Dota 2 in February and exited again just two months later, while Tundra Esports, despite being one of the most successful teams of the 2026 season, sold its roster to 1win and departed the competitive scene in June. 

For anyone planning on betting on The International 2026, these uncertainties are tricky to deal with. For the teams and their players, the problem is deeper than individual team performance. It is a question of whether the modern Dota 2 business model can support the cost of maintaining a championship caliber roster. Something needs to change in the next year or two.

Salary Numbers are Extraordinary

The most revealing figures came from the recently departed HEROIC. Former star David “Parker” Nicho Flores said during a livestream that he earned approximately $15,000 per month. His teammates were earning salaries between $9,000 and $12,000 per month, while the 16 year old rookie Santiago “TaiLung” Agüero was reportedly receiving somewhere between $5,000 and $8,000 a month. Those figures are particularly striking because HEROIC was not an organization operating at the very top of the European market. The roster was a strong South American team, but it was not Team Liquid or Team Falcons. 

Even using the lower end of the reported HEROIC figures, the five player roster represents tens of thousands of dollars in salary every month. At the upper end, the player payroll alone can approach or exceed $60,000 per month. Over a year, that is hundreds of thousands of dollars before paying a coach, manager, analysts, support staff, travel expenses, bootcamps, housing, equipment, taxes, legal costs, content production, marketing, and the organization's own overhead. 

The actual cost of a Tier 1 operation can therefore be considerably higher than the headline salary figures suggest. Tundra founder Maxim Demin described the market as inflated and said that maintaining a top level Dota 2 roster had become increasingly expensive. He specifically pointed to rising salaries and buyout fees, while also noting that organizations have to cover bootcamp expenses on top of player compensation.

This is important because salary inflation creates a peculiar competitive arms race. If one organization pays $15,000 for a player, another organization that wants that player may need to offer $20,000. If a well funded organization backed by a large commercial partner offers $25,000, competitors have to decide whether to match the offer or accept that they may lose the player. The individual player is acting rationally by taking the best available contract. The organization is also acting rationally by trying to assemble the best roster it can. Collectively, those rational decisions create an irrational market teams can no longer navigate.

SVG’s Question Pins the Needle 

As fans and insiders wonder about it, here is the context behind commentator and former professional player Avery “SVG” Silverman questioning why organizations continue paying $10,000, $20,000, or $30,000 a month for players when so many organizations are not breaking even.

SVG's argument was not that professional players should simply be paid less. His criticism was directed at the organizations creating an unsustainable bidding war in the first place. He essentially asked why an organization would knowingly spend enormous sums on a roster and then be surprised when the operation fails to generate a profit. The question is uncomfortable because there is no simple answer.

A top player is not just an expense, just like any other employee anywhere else. A star can help an organization qualify for tournaments, win prize money, attract sponsors, generate social media engagement and sell merchandise. A famous roster can also give a relatively obscure organization global visibility. But all of those benefits are difficult to convert into reliable monthly revenue.

A Dota 2 organization does not automatically receive a large payment simply because its team is one of the best in the world. It must continually qualify, perform, attract viewers, and satisfy commercial partners. A team can spend an entire season paying an elite roster and then miss the playoffs at several major tournaments. That makes the salary a fixed cost while the corresponding competitive revenue is highly variable. Even Team Liquid’s revenue, one of the biggest organizations in esports, is considered modest. 

The Complex Seven Way Prize Pool Model 

The common model for Dota 2 prize money distribution is a seven way split: five players, the coach, and the organization. That is broadly useful for understanding the economics, but it should not be treated as a universal contractual rule. Actual arrangements vary considerably between teams. Some organizations take a percentage of prize money, some take little or none, and player contracts can include different combinations of salary, prize money shares and bonuses.

Tundra's Maxim Demin provided a useful modern example, saying that players generally received the majority of prize winnings while the organization typically retained around 10% to 20%, depending on the agreement. The important point is not whether the organization receives exactly one seventh. It is that the organization frequently carries a large portion of the operational risk without receiving anything close to a guaranteed return.

For example, an organization can pay a roster $50,000 or more every month. It can then spend additional money on bootcamps and staff. If the team finishes outside the top positions at an event, the prize money return may be modest. If the team fails to qualify entirely, the organization receives no tournament prize money at all. Meanwhile, the players continue receiving their contracted salaries. That is a perfectly normal employment relationship, but it is a difficult business model when the underlying revenue base is small and unpredictable.

TI Prize Pool Collapse Changed the Equation

For years, The International acted as the financial safety valve (no pun intended) for professional Dota 2. The tournament became famous for extraordinary prize pools, with TI10 in 2021 reaching roughly $40 million. TI11, more than halved, remained enormous at nearly $19 million. Since then, the numbers have collapsed. TI 2023 was around $3.38 million, TI 2024 around $2.78 million, and the base prize pool for TI 2026 is $1.6 million. A far cry from just a few years ago. 

That is not merely a reduction in one tournament's prize money. It changes how organizations calculate the entire year. When The International was a $20 million, $30 million or $40 million spectacle, signing an expensive roster could be justified by the possibility that a strong TI run would generate a life changing return for everyone. However, that possibility has largely disappeared.

The modern circuit is more distributed. ESL, BLAST, PGL and other tournament organizers stage significant events throughout the year, which is healthier in some respects because teams have more opportunities to compete. But frequent tournaments also mean frequent travel and operating costs. More tournaments do not automatically mean more profit. Actually, for some, they can spell more financial headaches and make the logistics of it all a nightmare. 

Demin made this distinction precisely when discussing the modern ecosystem. He considered the tournament calendar more efficient than the old Dota Pro Circuit structure, but still argued that prize money alone is no longer enough to sustain a top tier organization. Even if it were to start gradually climbing again, with a million or two increase each year, it would not be enough to regulate the scene. Many organizations would still struggle. 

Tundra is a Concerning Warning 

Tundra's departure may be the most important example of the entire crisis because it destroys the argument that organizations simply need to win more. Tundra won The International 2022. It won multiple major tournaments. In 2026, it won four trophies and was one of the most successful teams in the world. Yet the organization sold the roster to 1win before both the Esports World Cup and The International. The players continued competing, but under a different organization's banner.

Demin cited three major factors: tighter regulation surrounding betting companies, the increasing expense of maintaining a top tier roster, and the opportunity to sell a valuable roster while it was still performing at an elite level. That first factor is especially important. Dota 2 has become dependent on organizations and commercial partners connected to betting. Demin went so far as to say that competing at the highest level without major commercial partners, particularly betting partners, is extremely difficult because prize money alone no longer supports the costs of a top tier organization.

This creates a dangerous dependency. If betting companies provide a significant portion of the money that makes high salaries possible, but regulators increasingly restrict betting advertising and sponsorship, organizations can lose the very revenue source that allowed them to participate in the salary arms race. This has been happening already, which can be seen in much less money being offered as the reward for teams and players. 

The GamerLegion Question

All of this brings us to the most interesting question raised by Ivan Burachenko's May prediction. Burachenko, the former PARI Esports marketing director, argued that another major organization would leave Dota 2 within one or two months of HEROIC's departure, with several more potentially freezing their Dota operations after TI 2026. Former PARI executive Sergey Glamazda went further, saying he expected three or four additional organizations to leave by the end of 2026 and suggesting BLAST might reconsider its Dota involvement for 2027.

The first part of that prediction now looks less mysterious. Tundra announced its departure on June 1, less than a month after HEROIC's May 4 announcement. Tundra's exit was therefore broadly consistent with Burachenko's forecast, although there is no public evidence establishing that Tundra was the organization he specifically had in mind. As for the organizations that could follow after TI, there is no responsible way to name two with certainty. The public reporting did not identify them.

GamerLegion is one organization that deserves scrutiny because it was explicitly floated as a possible candidate in reporting around Burachenko's comments, with financial difficulties and a history of delayed payments as the reasons why. GamerLegion entered Dota 2 only in late 2025 and acquired the Apex Genesis roster. In 2026, the team qualified for TI and became North America's only representative. Yet its tournament earnings listed by Escorenews amounted to approximately $110,750 for the year before TI, with several finishes producing relatively modest prize payouts. That does not prove GamerLegion will leave Dota 2. In fact, TI qualification gives the organization a valuable opportunity to increase its exposure and revenue.

Betting Matters More than it Seems

The Dota 2 betting market is not simply about fans placing wagers on matches. It is also connected to the commercial ecosystem surrounding teams. Organizations backed by betting companies can treat a Dota 2 roster partly as a marketing vehicle for another business. That changes their calculation. A team does not necessarily need its Dota division to be profitable on a standalone basis if the roster helps acquire customers or promote the parent company.

That gives such organizations an advantage over independent esports companies. The result is a two tier economic system. A traditional esports organization has to make Dota itself work commercially. An organization with a betting sponsor may be able to justify a large roster expenditure through the value it generates elsewhere. 

But that model has become harder to rely upon. Tundra's founder specifically identified the changing regulatory environment around betting companies as one of the reasons his organization could no longer justify the previous economic model. What organizations need most is predictable revenue. A smaller but reliable annual income stream can be more valuable to an organization than the possibility of winning a gigantic prize once a year.