The biggest esports winners of August 2025
While some major esports titles are in their offseason or are in the middle of standard league play, a few hosted their biggest events of the year in August.
Similar to July, the Esports World Cup and its enormous prize pools are key when discussing the biggest winners this month. But in terms of prestige and popularity, tournaments like Evo and IEM Cologne dwarf the event. Here are the teams and esports players that stand as the biggest winners of the month.
The highest-earning esports teams and biggest winners of August 2025
Team Liquid’s Mobile Legends: Bang Bang team was the biggest esports winner of August 2025, bringing home the biggest paycheck this month.
While Mobile Legends Bang Bang lacks visibility in much of the world, its season-ending tournament boasted a massive $3 million prize pool. That allowed champions Team Liquid to out-earn the biggest winners in other, more visible esports. Here are the five biggest esports winners of August 2025:
- Team Liquid (Mobile Legends: Bang Bang)
- Team Spirit (Counter-Strike 2)
- Xiao Hai (Street Fighter 6)
- Ulsan (Tekken 8)
- The MongolZ (Counter-Strike 2)
SRG.OG vs Team Liquid | DAY 9 | MSC at EWC 25 | Grand Finals
Team Liquid Mobile Legends: Bang Bang ($1 million)
Mobile Legends: Bang Bang’s Season Cup 2025 crowned this year’s world champions. The team that came out on top was Team Liquid’s Filipino roster.
The tournament was a roundly strong showing from Team Liquid PH, starting with group stage wins over Ultra Legends and ONIC to qualify for the playoffs. From there, Liquid topped Aurora Turkiye and beat ONIC in a rematch to make it to the grand finals. There, it met SRG.OG and came out on top with a 4-1 score. The championship capped a roundly strong season for Team Liquid PH that included a first-place finish in regional play, and brought the team a cool $1 million.
Team Spirit Counter-Strike ($707,812)
August saw a major shift in the Counter-Strike 2 esports scene. After dominating the first seven months of the year, Team Vitality’s major-winning roster suffered a relative skid in August. While it was still good and placed well in tournaments, it fell short of the finals in all three of August’s biggest events.
This opened the door for Team Spirit to reclaim its spot as the best Counter-Strike team in the world according to most major ranking systems. Spirit took first place in Blast Bounty Fall and IEM Cologne, one of the biggest events of the year.
SF6 EVO 2025 POOLS – Xiaohai (Mai) vs NoahTheProdigy (Luke)
Xiaohai ($255,539)
The Esports World Cup offers the biggest prize pools in fighting games by a considerable margin. That’s great news for Street Fighter 6 champion Zeng “Xiaohai” Zhuojun. This came alongside his second-place finish in the Esports World Cup’s Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves tournament in July.
Alongside this, the most prestigious fighting game tournament of the year, Evo, took place in August. Xiaohai placed top-12 in Evo’s Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves tournament, and top-six in its Street Fighter 6 event. That all added up to more than $255,000 for Xiaohai and actually made him the top individual earner of the month.
“울산, 2년 연속 EWC 우승! 철권의 새로운 역사를 쓰다” (2025 Esports World Cup | Tekken8) ENG sub
Ulsan ($250,000)
August wasn’t shaping up to be a good month for Tekken star Lim “Ulsan” Soo-hoon. After a very strong start to the year, Ulsan fell short in the SOOP TEKKEN League 2025: Season 1 Finals and couldn’t survive to the final day in Evo.
Things got turned around in a hurry at the Esports World Cup, which saw him take first place. That actually makes him a two-time champion at the event in Tekken 8, with this latest title coming with a $250,000 prize. Similar to Xiaohai, he actually out-earned the other esports winners of August as he didn’t need to divide up his winnings with any teammates.
Aurora vs. The MongolZ | HIGHLIGHTS | Esports World Cup 2025
The MongolZ Counter-Strike ($608,437)
The MongolZ pulled off a major coup in August 2025 by winning the Esports World Cup.
First, this gave the organization the biggest championship in its history. This wasn’t the first gold medal for The MongolZ, but it was both the biggest and most competitive tournament it has won to date. This was particularly sweet as The MongolZ spent most of 2025 as a perennial contender, which is a kind way of saying “a team that was good but never actually won any tournaments.”
Second, this is by far the biggest championship won by an Asian Counter-Strike team. While there’s always been a degree of Asian representation in Counter-Strike, largely monopolized by China, the results just haven’t been there. The MongolZ was already firmly cemented as the best Asian Counter-Strike team in history before the Esports World Cup. But winning the tournament yielded the best CS trophy the continent has seen.
Steven Rondina is a true lifelong gamer. His earliest memories are of playing video games, and he has continued playing them throughout his life with no plans to stop any time soon. Steven’s favorite franchises in gaming include Pokemon, Dark Souls, and Counter-Strike. He has previously published with Bleacher Report and other gaming outlets.
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