Parents, you probably don’t want to stop your children from playing video games from now on.  

Fortnite held its first-ever World Cup competition in the iconic Arthur Ashe arena. 16-year-old Kyle “Bugha” Giersdorf became the first Fortnite world champion in the solo division and won a whopping amount of $3 million USD. 

Let that just sink in for a bit.

To give a little more perspective, Engadget compared this prize money to other sports. Take a look at a snippet from Engadget’s article: The $30 million prize pool for the Fortnite World Cup matched that of this summer’s FIFA Women’s World Cup, the biggest showpiece event in women’s soccer. The teenager even earned almost 50 percent more than Tiger Woods did for winning the Masters – the golfing legend scooped up $2.07 million along with his 15th major title.”

Interestingly, the US Open men’s and women’s singles championship will take place at the same arena one month later and the champions will win $3.85 million USD.

Around 100 participants from 30 countries took part in the event and more than 2 million people watched the event live on Twitch. The event was a huge reminder to the world to wake up and sense the magnitude of eSports today. It proved that Fortnite and eSports, in general, is on its way to becoming one of the biggest events in the world and may soon just become as big as football or cricket one day. 

(Header Credit – Instagram, @fortnite)