China's new World E-Sport Championships will feature a massive $800k prize pool

There are an awful lot of eSport tournaments around Asia, but the newly-announced World E-Sport Championships have a pretty eye-catching “hook” for a brand-new tournament: they’ll feature a total prize pool of RMB 5 million (about $819,000).

The tournament will begin online, but the WEC Finals, which will be held in Hangzhou, China, will see that sum distributed amongst the winners of competitions in four different games: Dota 2, Hearthstone, Warcraft 3, and Starcraft 2. The tournament has also already partnered with a number of Chinese video and gaming sites to ensure fans will be able to follow along as the tournament progresses.

The tournament is quite obviously a Chinese-organized affair, but it’s not clear yet what teams and players from outside the Middle Kingdom might be invited to participate. With a prize pool that’s certainly nothing to scoff at—although it’s not yet clear exactly how the prizes will be distributed—WEC is certainly likely to attract some overseas interest.

(via WEC official site)