Vulcun announces $1M prize for League of Legends fantasy sports tournament

Vulcun.com announced today that it has a $1 million prize pool for its fantasy sports tournament for League of Legends fans.

With Vulcun, fans can assemble teams of their favorite e-sports players and bet real money in a contest. If their players do well in the League of Legends (LoL) Championship Season, the fans can then win real money. League is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), where teams of players use their hero characters fight each other and destroy the opposing squad’s base, and it’s the most popular online game in the world, according gamer social network Raptr.

Its championship series has become the gold standard for e-sports, and the fan following for the pro players is becoming big enough to become a real market in itself, much like fantasy sports for real-world physical sports such as football, according to Vulcun.

The new prize pool is four times bigger than Vulcun’s initial prize pool of $250,000, when it was announced three weeks ago.

Vulcun has daily free and paid contests using a salary-cap format. A user acts as a team’s manager, creating a roster of favorite players with a limited team budget. That roster then competes against everyone else’s on a daily basis. They can win cash if their teams do well.

Founders Ali Moiz and Murtaza Hussain started Vulcun.com, which has six employees. Moiz said the audience is growing 30 percent a week, since it was launched three weeks ago.

“The response has been so tremendous that we bumped up the figure from $250,000 to $1 million,” he said in an interview with GamesBeat.

So far, in three weeks, Vulcun has given away $36,000 to winners. The entry fees help cover those costs.

Imaqtpie, a former pro player who played ADC for Dignitas, said in a statement, “With a $1 million dollar prize pool on Vulcun I might just quit Twitch streaming and make a living off of Fantasy e-sports.”

Voyboy, a former pro player who’s played with the teams Curse, Dignitas, and CLG, said in a statement, “Fantasy e-sports is now legit. I’m coming for a piece of that $1 million on Vulcun, baby!”

Vulcun has raised $1.3 million in funding from Silicon Valley investors including eVentures, Battery Ventures and 500Startups.

Moiz said, “We promise to re-invest every single dollar we make into giving back to the e-sports community. Three weeks ago we promised you we’d get you to $1 million in prizes. Today, we’ve kept that promise. What’s next? With your support, $10 million.”

Rivals include AlphaDraft.

Above: Vulcun

Image Credit: Vulcun