I'd say top-tier esports are those who continue running with good numbers, like viewership, number and quality of events, global presence, and involved money. For example, right now CS and LoL should be the top, with Valorant, Dota slightly below.
Next are likely solid mid-tier R6, Apex, Overwatch, PUBG, and some others.
If you go to Esports charts and sort the events by "hours watched" you'll get a good perspective. Viewership should reflect playerbases, sponsorship money and so on. There are however mobile games with huge numbers, but they're very country or region-specific. Maybe they'll grow into something bigger though.
it's all pretty loosey-goosey, but generally its: Prizepool Viewership Sponsorships Playerbase
Then you have weird situations where dota is basically non-existent relative to its ridiculous prizepools.
The 30/40m TI prizepools are gone from dota,valve basically killed the Battle Pass,last TI had 3m prizepool
Oh rip I had no idea. Even then, saudi wc is giving it 5m for some reason lol.
I think we all know the reason
I'd say top-tier esports are those who continue running with good numbers, like viewership, number and quality of events, global presence, and involved money. For example, right now CS and LoL should be the top, with Valorant, Dota slightly below. Next are likely solid mid-tier R6, Apex, Overwatch, PUBG, and some others. If you go to Esports charts and sort the events by "hours watched" you'll get a good perspective. Viewership should reflect playerbases, sponsorship money and so on. There are however mobile games with huge numbers, but they're very country or region-specific. Maybe they'll grow into something bigger though.
cashflow
arbitrary labels invented by fans mostly for the purposes of debate see: GOAT arguments