Counter-Stike:Global Offensive has become a worldwide known first-person shooter game. Ever since it became an eSports, CS:GO started attracting a lot of various sponsors who were willing to invest money into the tournaments.

In the beginning, tournaments were mostly sponsored by skin gambling sites related to the game. Some of the most famous gambling sites are Betway, Arcanebet, 22Bet, and many others. Not only did those gambling sites decided to sponsor tournaments, some of the even decided to sponsor teams. After the latest updates made by Valve in relation to skin gambling industry, most of those sites seized their operations. For instance, team Hellraisers were sponsored by csgopolygon.com.

Not only betting and gambling providers are sponsoring teams and events, but car companies are also in this type of marketing as well. Let’s take Astralis as an example. Their main investor and sponsor is Audi, a German automobile production giant. Furthermore, they are also sponsored by a clothing company Jack&Jones. Team North, on the other hand, is sponsored by Adidas. Now you are aware how much money is invested into this eSport in particular, let’s take a look at some of the biggest CS:GO prize pools to date. 

WORLD ELECTRONIC SPORTS GAMES 2017 – WORLD FINALS

CS:GO Prize Pool: $1.500,000

This event took part in Haikou, Hainan, China. There were 32 teams invited from all over the world. This tournament had a lot of qualifiers, and in the end, Swedish roster Fnatic came on top and bagged themselves a total of $800.000.

However, there were a lot of problems with this tournament. Mainly, a lot of players were unhappy about their

World Electronic Sports Games 2017

accommodations. Furthermore, money was not paid out to several teams and player, which led to numerous accusations, so WESG chief had to make a statement about those allegations. In the end, players found out that China’s government has to check every transaction above $40.000.

As you can see from the prize pool and regions competing, there was a lot of money invested in this tournament. You are probably wondering how could they afford such big expenses. Money was mostly acquired through their sponsors. Here are the main sponsors of WESG 2017:

• ANT Financial
• 王老吉
• Hyundai
• Cool Ten
• Republic of Gamers
• HyperX
• DXRacer

ELEAGUE SEASON 1

CS:GO Prize Pool: $1.400,000

Eleague Season 1 took part in North America, Atlanta, Georgia, to be more exact. It had a total of 3 qualifiers for the main stage, and 24 participating teams on the said stage. Eventually, Polish veterans, Virtus.Pro stormed through the tournament and won themselves a total purse of $390,00.

ELEAGUE SEASON 1

This event was very important for the entire eSports community, mainly because it was streamed live on cable television, on the channel TBS. This was a first CS:GO’s attempt to make it into the big mainstream media outlet. According to the final numbers, Eleague Season 1 attracted over 19 million total viewers on TBS. However, in the first week of broadcast, this event attracted 509.000 total viewers which is higher than the regular season average of the NHL broadcast on NBC Sports (384,000).

Maint event was played in the Turner Sports venue, a very modern and probably expensive venue. Even though this tournament was broadcasted on national television, it did not attract giants from the automobile industry, or anything similar. Most of their sponsors were in the technology or gaming business. These are the biggest sponsors of Eleague Season 1:

• iBUYPOWER
• NEEDforSEAT
• ZOWIE by BenQ
• HyperX

WORLD ELECTRONIC SPORTS GAMES 2016

CS:GO Prize Pool: $1.500,000

Another WESG event hosted by Alisport and ImbaTV. This time there were 23 teams fighting it out for the grand prize. One thing you will have to understand is that these were the early days for CS:GO as an eSport. 

WORLD ELECTRONIC SPORTS GAMES 2016

This tournament was offering an outstanding prize, which was unbelievable to even think of. So logically, this event attracted a lot of top-tier teams and a lot of sponsors. In the end, French roster EnVyUs lifted the trophy and cashed in on an $800,000 check.

It was played in Changzhou Olympic Sports Center, and it attracted a lot of CS:GO enthusiasts and fans. This tournament was a big boom for the Counter-Strike:Global Offensive and it was able to attract numerous different sponsors.

• Alibaba Group
• Ant Financial
• Alipay
• MONEY STATION
• Aiyoumi
• DXRACER
• Logitech
• ASUS ROG
• ZOWIE GEAR
• HyperX
• RestMan

ELEAGUE SEASON 2

CS:GO Prize Pool: $1,100,000

Another season of Eleague event was presented with a slightly less money in the prize pool. Taking place in the same town, and in the same venue as well.

ELEAGUE SEASON 2

This event was aired for a total of 74 hours in 2 weeks, and it managed to gather a total of 6 million viewers. North American organization Optic Gaming was able to win the entire thing, earning a stunning $400,000.

If we are to talk about sponsors, nothing changed from Eleague season 1. All the main sponsors stayed, as this was probably signed as a long-term contract.

• iBUYPOWER
• NEEDforSEAT
• ZOWIE by BenQ
• HyperX

MAJOR TOURNAMENTS

Most of the major tournaments are having a total prize pool of $1.000,000. Let’s take the latest major as an example. It took part in the sold-out Wembley stadium in London, with 16 best teams participating. Even though they managed to sell out an entire venue, they also earned a lot of money from their sponsors, so there is one question we should all ask ourselves, why is the prize pool still only $1.000,00. The tournament managed to attract a huge number of sponsors, some of them being the most popular bookmakers, while the others are giants in the gaming industry.

• HyperX
• Betway
• DreamTeam
• SteelSeries
• DXRacer
• ZOWIE Global
• Epics.GG
• ALIENWARE

Betting Has Influenced CS:GO Prize Pools

In the early days of CS:GO, the fan base was not that big, minor tournaments were not streamed at all, even if they were streamed they would attract only a few hundred viewers. However, once bookmakers decided to provide odds for certain CS:GO tournaments a lot of bettors decided to watch those tournaments and placing either pre-match bets or live bets. Let’s face it, most of us are entertained by betting, especially on a game as exciting as Counter-Strike:Global Offensive is.

In the begging, CSGO betting was a one-way street, you could only bet on the winner of a certain match. However, in 2018, we have a lot of eSports specialized bookmakers, in the likes of 22bet and Arcanebet. Not only will you be able to bet on match winners, but you can also place a live bet on certain matches, specials are insane, as you can bet on a pistol round winner, rounds handicaps, top fraggers for their teams, and many others. You can also bet on an outright, which means placing a bet on a team to win an entire tournament. Most of the time, the odds on it are enormously high.

Overall, the betting industry has added a new dimension to the community and size of CS:GO prize pools. Furthermore, bookmakers are doing a smart job by investing their profits back into the game, mostly by sponsoring teams and tournaments.

Initial Counter-Strike:Global Offensive release contained no weapon skins. However, after a couple of updates, Valve decided to introduce various new CS:GO skins for each and every weapon. To be more precise, skins were added on 14.8.2013., in “The Arms Deal Update”. As you can imagine, this was a big boom in the CS:GO community, as people could trade skins between them, or even sell them for Steam money, or even sell them on external trading sites, which were created in order to let people withdraw real money.

BASIC INFORMATION ABOUT SKINS

CS:GO skins can appear in three different variations: Stat-trak, souvenir, and regular skins. One thing to be careful in this department is that skin cannot be a souvenir and a stat-trak. Souvenir skins can only be acquired by opening souvenir drops, which drop from the Major matches, or by purchasing them for crazy amounts of money. One more thing about souvenir weapons, every souvenir weapon will have a gold sticker of an MVP of the round it was dropped in. Stat-trak weapons are skinned weapons which will keep track of your kills, every single kill will be tracked on that particular weapon. However, regular skins are easy to understand, they are regular skins, with nothing special attached to them, they are here only for the looks.

WEAR

There is another variable when it comes to the most popular CS:GO skins. Those are wear values. All the weapons come with one.

• Factory New
• Minimal Wear
• Field-Tested
• Well-Worn
• Battle-scarred

As you can probably understand, having a Factory New skin is probably the best and most profitable grade of skin you can acquire. These type of skins look really nice and clean. Minimal wear and Field-tested are also looking decent enough for most of the people. However, the last two types of wear look very used, scratched and overall ugly.

SKIN MARKETS

As CS:GO was becoming more popular, so were the skins. Especially in the last couple of years, the skin industry was blooming, especially in the gambling and trading section. Sites like opskins.com, bitskins.com and similar trading posts were stocked with numerous expensive and less expensive skins, as people could actually sell them for real money, with only a small fee.

Alongside gambling and selling/buying skins, sites like skinsjar.com appeared. They were set up as trading platforms, but you were trading with the site, to be more precise, their bot. You were able to exchange CS:GO skins that bored you and acquire a new one, with a fee included in the trade.

Skin industry is going to even deeper depths. Trades and collectors started to appear. Some people were able to trade up their 1$ skin to a 100$ knife, just by trading. There are numerous videos evidence about it. Furthermore, a lot of rich people decided to create a special edition of their CS:GO inventories. For instance, there are numerous collector groups on Steam, where only people who have a total inventory value over $25.000 are invited. There are also people who are willing to pay an enormous amount of money just for one special skin. Youtuber called Sparkles unboxed a souvenir AWP Dragon Lore, and sold it to a Chinese collector for a whopping $20.000.

EASIEST WAY TO GET FREE CS:GO SKINS

A lot of younger CS:GO players can not afford the best looking or the most expensive skins in the game. However, there are a couple of solutions for those type of players. Websites like idle-empire.com and fee.gg are some of the most popular ones. You can win points on these sites by watching different videos, doing surveys or even joining random servers and being idle on them.

There are also other ways to earn free Counter-Strike:Global Offensive skins. Let’s take hellcase.com as an example. If you decide to put advertise them by putting their site in your steam username, you will be awarded a daily free spin on their site. You can win money or a free opening of a case on their site, where you will definitely win a fully withdrawable skin, no questions asked.

BEST AND THE MOST POPULAR CS:GO SKINS

At the moment, there is a crazy amount of different skins offered by Valve. Not only that, they are releasing new ones in each of new cases, which are added on a regular basis. In this article, I will go over 2 most popular skins for most used weapons in the game.

AWP

AWP Dragon Lore

An iconic weapon skin in CS:GO. Only a few available to purchase, and it is one of the most expensive CS:GO skins in the game. The lowest price for a battle-scarred one is $450, while the factory new one will cost you $1.200. This skin is definitely a dream for everyone who is a competitive AWPer.

AWP Medusa

Another very popular skin. Presents the only challenge to the above mentioned Dragon Lore. Very expensive as well, but who would not want to wield that dark blue medusa. At the moment, the lowest price of AWP Medusa is $310 in the battle-scarred state, and factory new one is priced at $1.110.

RIFLES

AK-47 The Empress

Take a look at this beauty. Very colorful skin with a brutal piece of art included in it. You can buy it for an average of $50.

AK-47 Fire Serpent

This skin does not look so nice, however, it is as rare as a Dragon Lore.  For a battle-scarred version of this skin, you will have to play around $40, but for a stat-trak factory new one, a stunning $4000.

M4A4 Howl

In my opinion, this is the most badass skin in the game. But, it is very rare and as expensive as the Dragon Lore and Fire Serpent. Factory new one will cost you around $1000, while the stat-trak factory new will cost you even more, $3.500.

M4A4 Poseidon

Not as rare as Howl, but another beautiful skin with a god of sea himself implemented into this sea blue skin. It is not nearly as expensive as other CS:GO skins mentioned in this article, but it is as equally nice. A better-looking version will cost you around $150.

M4A1-S Master Piece

Graffiti inspired skin, which was way more popular 2 years ago, but still, it looks really nice if it is in a clean, not damaged state. This is a fairly cheap skin, the price for a decent state of it is around $60.

M4A1-S Knight

A sharp, very modern look. Skin covered in pure gold. Most of the professional players tend to use this skin, as it is very unique. Prices are roughly the same, either for factory new or minimal wear state, as it only comes into these two options, $300.

PISTOLS

DESERT EAGLE Blaze

Another badass skin, perfect for removing your opponent’s heads. This skin is preferred by FaZe’s Niko, so if you are a fan of his, this is your chance to have some things in common. It costs around $120.

GLOCK-18 Fade

This is the king of all pistol skins. Looks very simple and modern. But for the weapon that you will mostly use in 2-3 rounds in the match, it costs a lot. Roughly around $300.

USP-S Kill Confirmed

One bullet, headshot, and blood. This USP-S skin says it all. Once it was released, its price was sky high. But now you can find it for less than $50 in a solid state.

KNIVES

Getting a knife is a dream for most of the CS:GO community. Being able to wield and inspect something more than just a regular knife feels good. To be totally honest, you can buy a real knife way cheaper than a virtual one. With the last couple of updates came even more type of knives, so now you definitely have a tough task in front of you, that being, finding a perfect knife for you. However, since a lot of CS:GO enthusiasts are willing to invest money into the beautiful and scary knife, these would be their best picks.

(BAYONET Fade) – $200

(BUTTERFLY KNIFE Tiger Tooth) – $450

(FLIP KNIFE Marble Fade) – $250

(HUNTSMAN KNIFE Crimson Web) – $800

(KARAMBIT Lore) – $1200

(KARAMBIT Gamma Doppler) – $500

(M9 BAYONET Doppler) – $300