ESPN has learned that two pools, blue and red, were each capped at close to 10,000 entries with a cost of $100 per entry. Those filled up so quickly that a second-chance pool was created, sources said, at $200 apiece. A high-roller survivor pool was also offered at $500 per entry. Another pool, which started midway through the season, was a second-half pool and cost $100 per entry.
All the pools combined had more than 23,000 entries, players with knowledge of the contests said, with a collective value that surpassed $2.5 million.