TiMi Studio Group, a wholly owned game studio of Chinese game publisher Tencent announced Friday that it would host the King Pro League (KPL) Grand Finals from Oct. 2 – Nov. 16 and that the Grand Finals will be held at Beijing Worker’s Stadium in Beijing, China. The play-off stage and breakout stage will be held in Changsha and Hangzhou, respectively. The Beijing Worker’s Stadium has a seating capacity (depending on configuration) of 68,000, according to StadiumDB.com.
The competition will feature 12 KPL teams with a ¥70M ($9.92M USD) total prize pool, with the winner of the competition taking home ¥22M ($3.1M). In addition, Tencent and TiMi Studio Group will also provide an exclusive FMVP in-game skin to the FMVP player.
The KPL Grand Finals replaces the Honor of Kings International Championship as the top competition in the Honor of Kings esports ecosystem. It will also give the winner a new trophy called the “Holy Dragon Cup” to commemorate this brand-new competition.
The competition will also feature existing KPL sponsors, including apparel brand PUMA, oil company Castrol, mobile phone makers SnapDragon and Vivo’s IQOO, automobile company SAIC Volkswagen, Unilever-owned shampoo brand Clear, home appliance company Hinsense, jewelry brand Lukfook Jewelry, beer brand SuperX, energy drink brand DongPeng SuperDrink, and Meituan.
According to esports outlets Esports Earnings, the KPL Grand Finals might become the single highest-prize money esports tournament in 2024, not just in mobile esports, but also in all esports titles. The current highest-prize money single tournament is Dota 2’s Riyadh Masters 2024, featuring $5.05M total prize money. The Riyadh Masters 2024 is a Dota 2 esports competition that was part of the Saudi Arabian government-backed Esports World Cup (EWC), which had a total prize pool of $60M across 22 titles.