While many professional sports like the NHL and NBA are entering the final stages of their seasons, other less well-known professional leagues are also working their way towards the climax of their year’s efforts. Just this week, the prize pool for the highly anticipated professional video game competition “The International 4” reached a staggering $6 million through an outstanding feat of fan dedication.

The International is a globally hyped competition organized annually by the Valve Corporation in which the world’s best teams compete in Valve’s most popular free-to-play game Dota 2. Dota 2 pits two teams of five heroes against one another, each with the mutual goal of infiltrating one another’s base and destroying their core building known as their “Ancient”. Players in Dota 2 are required to utilize precise communication and high levels of skill to kill enemy heroes and progress towards the enemy’s base. Since the official release of Dota 2 in July 2013, the game has seen a surge in players with almost eight million unique players now online.

Ever since the first International tournament in 2011, Valve has been setting new boundaries in the competitive gaming scene with the scope of their competitions. The inaugural event, known as TI1, featured one of the largest prize pools in competitive gaming history which had the year’s winning team Na’Vi walking away with $1 million.

This year’s International tournament, TI4, is not only breaking ground in the professional gaming scene, but the entire sporting universe. In only over a little less than a week, fans managed to contribute $20 million towards the event, subsequently raising the tournament’s prize pool to a massive $6.5 million, the largest that any gaming competition has ever seen to date. Fans were able to achieve this by purchasing an item through the game’s in-game store that gave the players items in-game and sent money towards funding the event. With TI4 scheduled to take place starting July 18, the current prize pool is estimated to possibly reach $10 million and surpass better-known events such as the Masters golf tournament ($9 million).

Although many people may see The International as a nerd convention or nothing more than silly games, many others view it as much more. To the teams that compete at Valve’s ultimate competition, this is their World Series and Super Bowl. When broken down, The International is not unlike many physical sports, requiring teams to practice upwards of 10 hours a day to perfect their strategies and hone their skills. Only the best of the best will manage to find their way into the competitive scene and teams will often times evaporate due to the volatile nature of the E-Sports industry. The International 4 will take place on July 18^th thru July 21^st at the Key Arena in Seattle, WA and will feature teams from across the globe.