Magic: The Gathering Arena Announces $10 Million Prize Pool For 2019 Esports

Magic: The Gathering Arena is entering the esports arena next year, and it's busting down the door with a fat wad of cash.

The Magic Pro League "Establishes a new level of professional play, featuring top-ranked players from around the world." It covers both traditional tabletop Magic as well as Arena, and will feature 32 of the top-ranked players in the world in weekly Arena matches. For the rest of us, there are Mythic Championships, billed as "The new flagship competitions for MTG Arena esports and tabletop Magic."

There aren't many more details on the Magic site about how all this will break down, except that a total of $10 million will be on the line. For now, you can pick up the Esports Starter Kit, which contains 25 competitive cards, with the code GAMEAWARDS via the MTG Arena client.

Wizards promises more will be revealed in the new year. In any case, it's clear that the company has far bigger plans for Arena than it ever did for Magic Duels, which still has a reasonably active player base. Still, I wouldn't be surprised to see that title dwindle down to the point of irrelevance -- and possibly discontinuation -- sometime in 2019.