How did they generate the prize pool? Donations?
probably going to earn it back from streams, advertisements, they could even charge a sign up fee and with such a reward there will be participants..
Actually 1/4th of all compendium and compendium points sales goes to this prize pool. Valve contributed 1.6 million to begin with, so 8.4 was generated from 1/4 of the sales, means valve takes away the other 3/4, which is ~25 million. More than enough to pay for this.