Over the period from 2011 to 2021, the number of international awards won by Finnish films increased overall. The number peaked in 2015 at ** awards. In 2021, Finnish films were awarded ** international prizes.

Dota 2 is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game released by Valve in 2013. The world's top Dota 2 players compete in an annual eSports competition known as The International. The International 13, Dota's 2024 championship which took place in Copenhagen, Denmark, had a total prize pool of just under 2.6 million U.S. dollars. Dota 2 heroes When playing Dota 2, two opposing teams of five players each take control of a character, referred to as a hero in game, to demolish a structure within the enemy team’s base. As of 2025, Pudge was the most popular hero in Dota 2 based on the number of matches played with the character. Focusing on the win rate of the playable characters, however, showed that Abaddon was the most successful Dota 2 hero in the 12 months preceding January 2025. Meanwhile, the hero known as Medusa had the highest KDA – which refers to the number of kills and assists per death – out of all the Dota 2 heroes in the same time period. Popular video game genres While multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) games do entice many gamers, it is not the most popular type of video game genre worldwide. According to the Statista Global Consumer Survey, action games, including, but not limited to, platformers and fighting games, were the most popular video game genre for players in the United States. Elsewhere, roleplaying games were the most popular computer games in South Korea as of 2023. While the former studies were focused on casual gamers in their respective countries, a survey focusing on eSports fans in China found that MOBA games were the most popular genre for Chinese eSports fans.

As of 2023, there were a cumulative total of ** winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics in Japan. Eight won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Syukuro Manabe for his physical modeling of Earth’s climate, quantifying variability, and reliably predicting global warming.

The International 2021, a Dota 2 competition, was the most successful e-sports tournament for professional players from Russia in terms of total prize money won over the period from 2017 to 2024. Russian participants won approximately ** million U.S. dollars at The International 2021. To compare, at The International 2023, the players earned over *** million U.S. dollars.

Those who participate in eSports tournaments have the chance to take home considerable cash prizes. Call of Duty, League of Legends (LOL), and other popular franchises tend to have some of the highest prize pools. As of December 2024, the estimated prize money for *** tournaments amounted to around **** million U.S. dollars for that year. This figure peaked in 2015 at nearly ** million U.S. dollars. How many people watch the League of Legends World Championship? League of Legends is not only popular among players, but also among eSports viewers. As of December 2023, the League of Legends 2023 World Championship, also known as “Worlds,” managed to rank as the most watched eSports event of all time, with a recorded *** million peak viewers. In comparison, **** million LoL fans tuned in to watch the previous year’s championship game. How popular is League of Legends on social media? While plenty of fans tune in to see the franchise’s championship event each year, others are happy to watch via social media platforms such as Twitch. In December 2024, the average number of League of Legends viewers on Twitch totaled roughly ******. This figure peaked at ******* in October 2021, when the animated series Arcane, which is based on the game, was released on Netflix.

The eSport tournament that has offered the greatest overall prize pool as of June 2025 was ‘The International 2021’, with a total prize pool of over 40 million U.S. dollars. The most recent edition of the Dota 2 eSports tournament, ‘The International’, took place in Denmark in September 2024. Previous iterations of ‘The International’ have consistently offered the greatest prize pool in each respective year and, as such, constitute the top seven eSports tournaments within this ranking. The International ‘The International’ was originally organized as a promotional event for the release of Dota 2 and has subsequently been held each year with a growing prize pool, contributed primarily by crowdfunding sources. Players are offered the opportunity to purchase a form of battle pass known as a ‘Compendium’ that offers additional content within the game, with a quarter of the revenue generated through ‘Compendium’ sales directly contributing to the prize pool. Online streaming platforms The popularity of both eSports as an entity and, by extension, eSports events, is largely driven by the growing availability of online streaming platforms, such as Youtube and Twitch. This allows a variety of eSports organizations and personnel to offer a range of live commentary, retrospective analysis, match predictions, and player interviews, both independently and in cooperation with eSports events. Twitch, for example, has hosted live streams of the ‘League of Legends World Championship’ since 2012, and ‘The International’ since 2013, with multiple streams available in a range of different languages.

The PUBG Mobile Global Championship is a mobile eSports tournament that is the culmination of the PUBG Mobile season. The PUBG Mobile Global Championship 2024 closed in December 2024 and was contested by the best PUBG Mobile teams from throughout the world. The prize pool for the tournament that year stood at three million U.S. dollars. eSports tournament prize pools Professional gamers compete in a wide variety of eSports championships each year and the tournament prize pools are an important draw for the competitions. The developers of popular video game franchise Call of Duty organized annual tournaments for their mobile platform since 2020, with the winners taking home one million U.S. dollars in the 2024 iteration of the Call of Duty: Mobile World Championship. Looking at the cumulative tournament prize pools across leading eSports games worldwide, PUBG Mobile ranked eighth, whereas Dota 2 proved to be the most lucrative competition overall for professional eSports players. eSports viewership Every year, millions of eSports fans tune in to watch their favorite gamers compete in global tournaments. As of December 2024, the Free Fire World Series 2021 hosted in Singapore had the third-largest audience size of a leading eSports tournament, with over 5.4 million viewers in total. The League of Legends World Championship is another popular competition, with the 2024 finals peaking at nearly 6.9million viewers in 2024.

In 2024, the estimated cumulative prize money for Dota 2 tournaments across the globe stood at ***** million U.S. dollars. This marked a significant decline from the cumulative prize pool of almost ** million U.S. dollars in 2021.

In 2025, around **** million Americans watched the Academy Awards ceremony. Oscars viewership fluctuates year by year, however, the last time the ceremony drew in a U.S. audience of more than ** million was back in 2014. The figure recorded in 2021 was the lowest yet, and marked a drop-off of over ** percent from the 2020 audience. Coverage of the Academy Awards Viewership of awards ceremonies can depend on multiple factors, ranging from personal preferences to overall interest in nominees, as well as how much coverage is devoted to the ceremony before and during its broadcast. Interest in upcoming events in the media industry is often generated via social media, which can be extremely effective in generating discussions, interactions, and general awareness. In 2018, the Academy Awards were mentioned *** million times on social media during the ceremony, and have also proved to be some of the most popular TV specials on Twitter in recent years. Conversely, a survey held in early 2019 revealed that ** percent of U.S. adults had not come across any news coverage for the 2019 Academy Awards at all.

The UK inflation rate was 3.6 percent in June 2025, up from 3.4 percent in the previous month, and the fastest rate of inflation since January 2024. Between September 2022 and March 2023, the UK experienced seven months of double-digit inflation, which peaked at 11.1 percent in October 2022. Due to this long period of high inflation, UK consumer prices have increased by over 20 percent in the last three years. As of the most recent month, prices were rising fastest in the communications sector, at 6.1 percent, but were falling in both the furniture and transport sectors, at -0.3 percent and -0.6 percent, respectively.
The Cost of Living Crisis High inflation is one of the main factors behind the ongoing Cost of Living Crisis in the UK, which, despite subsiding somewhat in 2024, is still impacting households going into 2025. In December 2024, for example, 56 percent of UK households reported their cost of living was increasing compared with the previous month, up from 45 percent in July, but far lower than at the height of the crisis in 2022. After global energy prices spiraled that year, the UK's energy price cap increased substantially. The cap, which limits what suppliers can charge consumers, reached 3,549 British pounds per year in October 2022, compared with 1,277 pounds a year earlier. Along with soaring food costs, high-energy bills have hit UK households hard, especially lower income ones that spend more of their earnings on housing costs. As a result of these factors, UK households experienced their biggest fall in living standards in decades in 2022/23. Global inflation crisis causes rapid surge in prices The UK's high inflation, and cost of living crisis in 2022 had its origins in the COVID-19 pandemic. Following the initial waves of the virus, global supply chains struggled to meet the renewed demand for goods and services. Food and energy prices, which were already high, increased further in 2022. Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 brought an end to the era of cheap gas flowing to European markets from Russia. The war also disrupted global food markets, as both Russia and Ukraine are major exporters of cereal crops. As a result of these factors, inflation surged across Europe and in other parts of the world, but typically declined in 2023, and approached more usual levels by 2024.