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As has been hinted at for a few days, ESL will be hosting a large Dota 2 event this summer at a German soccer stadium. The event will have a $150,000 prize pool and take place June 28-29 (one week after MLG Anaheim) and use the crowd-funding through ticket sales that we have started seeing in the last year. Though the number of teams is not set yet, the likely figure is 8 in total, with 6 decided through regional qualifiers as indicated in the Kennigit interview below
From their press release:
COLOGNE, 25.02.14 One of Germany’s 2006 World Cup football stadiums, CommerzbankArena, will play host to eSports competition on June 28th and 29th as the Electronic Sports League (ESL) prepare to showcase ESL One Frankfurt at the venue. In the place of performers such as Michael Jackson, The Rolling Stones and Madonna, the video game Dota 2 will fill the legendary stadium.
“Dota 2 saw the first ever million dollar prize pool and this year I am pleased to say it will see its first ever packed stadium. With a capacity of over 35,000, ESL One Frankfurt 2014 is poised to be the largest eSports spectacle Dota 2 has ever seen,” said Managing Director of Pro Gaming, Ulrich Schulze. “Our newly launched ESL One season will see some of the best Dota 2 action the world has to offer. I’m very excited to see finals played out centre stage at such an iconic stadium. With a focused goal of creating legendary esports experiences for our fans, ESL One Frankfurt will be the first of many massive scale ESL events in the years to come.”
Over the course of two days, eight of the world’s best Dota 2 teams will take to their computers in order to decide the ESL One Frankfurt 2014 champion. Watched by millions around the world, the winners will take home the lion's share of an impressive US$150,000 prize pool, which fans will be able to further contribute to online through purchase of ingame items.
Tickets for the event are available through ESL One’s dedicated tournament site. For more information surrounding ticketing, the tournament, etc. please visit: http://www.eslone.com.
Press inquires can be made at: press@eslone.com
“Dota 2 saw the first ever million dollar prize pool and this year I am pleased to say it will see its first ever packed stadium. With a capacity of over 35,000, ESL One Frankfurt 2014 is poised to be the largest eSports spectacle Dota 2 has ever seen,” said Managing Director of Pro Gaming, Ulrich Schulze. “Our newly launched ESL One season will see some of the best Dota 2 action the world has to offer. I’m very excited to see finals played out centre stage at such an iconic stadium. With a focused goal of creating legendary esports experiences for our fans, ESL One Frankfurt will be the first of many massive scale ESL events in the years to come.”
Over the course of two days, eight of the world’s best Dota 2 teams will take to their computers in order to decide the ESL One Frankfurt 2014 champion. Watched by millions around the world, the winners will take home the lion's share of an impressive US$150,000 prize pool, which fans will be able to further contribute to online through purchase of ingame items.
Tickets for the event are available through ESL One’s dedicated tournament site. For more information surrounding ticketing, the tournament, etc. please visit: http://www.eslone.com.
Press inquires can be made at: press@eslone.com
We conducted an interview with Product Manager and Dota Stuff Do-er Kennigit from ESL about the tournament and here is what he had to say.
TeamLiquid: Before we get into ESL expanding their Dota 2 presence, let's put it into perspective by talking a little about EMS One. What did ESL learn holding the EMS One series?
Kennigit: So, one of the philosophies at ESL is to do things smart and to not get caught up in momentum of tournaments one upping each other. The way StarCraft 2 was in 2011 with tournaments feeling forced to invite more and more Koreans and driving the prize pool higher and higher without a care in the world about sustainability….If you look at something like IEM which is on its 8th season, then for us it’s about evaluating the space, looking for opportunity to do something unique. If that opportunity isn't there yet, we are okay with waiting and keeping things small until it is.
That is really the case of EMS One in 2013 - it was intentionally kept small to evaluate the space, see the direction things were going and see where there were unique opportunities for us in the long run. The problem with Dota right now (and last year too), is that you and I can go to a peripheral partner, get $10,000 and suddenly have the best teams in the world playing in our league without any real unique selling points beyond the branding. There's a pretty crazy signal to noise ratio right now and teams don't even have enough time to scrim sometimes because there are too many qualifiers, online cross region games to play etc.I think some of that will change this year but we recognized that it wasn't a direction we wanted to take our Dota product.
As I hope is clear by now, we are retiring the EMS (ESL Major Series) identifier as part of our rebirth of the product, and renamed it to ESL One - focused more around large scale, hyped up, legendary entertainment experiences. That is the something very few others across the globe can do right now. Once it was clear where we wanted be with Dota, it was relatively easy to start to focus more of our production experience towards it….With LCS, WCS, and Blizzcon all under our belt, plus years of our own tournaments like IEM, ESL Pro Series etc, we’re getting real good at production.
A lot of people questioned ESL's decision of not using a larger venue for EMS One. But now ESL will hold a tournament in a freaking stadium. What changed? Tell us a bit of the whole process behind setting up this tournament.
I answered this a bit, but its simply a case of us taking the time we need to make smart decisions. ESL has close to 200 hundred employees and is the largest esports company in the world….that is not by accident. That’s not to say there isn't some risk involved in what we are trying to accomplish with ESL One Frankfurt, but based on our experience in events, broadcasting and the relationships we have with partners globally, filling Commerzbank-Arena isn’t really that wild of an idea. If you look at the size of Dota, the population of Western-Europe and then look how engaged people are getting, we think this is exactly the direction we need to go.
I’ve been out to Commerzbank-Arena a few times now...it’s really great, We’re able to take advantage of a lot of the assets of a Football stadium this large - private VIP boxes for the players and their management and guests, a fleshed out press conference room, a large VIP area that fans will be able to get tickets to and a few other surprises we have under our sleeve for show time.
How does logistics work for a circular stadium and how do you guys intend on showing the video feed to such a large crowd?
We can’t discuss it quite yet….but I seriously can’t wait to show you how we’re going to display it. I don't think esports has ever been shown live like this.
ESL will enable the community to further the prizepool through purchases of in-game items. What is ESL's experience with these systems?
The in-game contribution and sales model that Valve has developed has given everyone an extra revenue stream to use. In short, it’s great - It’s proving very successful so many of the Dota 2 operations out there. The fact that fans excited about an event like ours and directly influence it’s success is really pushing everyone forward.
What can we expect for the in-game items? Who are the artists behind them?
The major tournaments are trending towards item sets, compendiums, and other means of allowing fans who are excited about our events to contribute. ESL One Frankfurt will have something similar though we can’t talk about it quite yet or who we are working with.
Traditionally, the majority of the tournament slots on ESL tournaments are decided via qualifiers. But in Dota, most tournaments invite teams. What will be the system used for this tournament?
It’s one of the points we've been discussing a lot internally across all our products. Qualification and investing into the unknown players and teams is extremely important to us. At the same time we have to be honest about the fact that this directly impacts viewership, interest, hype and ultimately the success of tournaments. We’re currently looking at inviting a couple of the best teams and having the other 6 qualify through regional qualifiers (no cross region). Whoever they ultimately are will be 8 of the best teams in the world. I don’t have an exact breakdown yet because we may change it based on feedback we get but that's the direction we are going right now.
How will the tournament slots be distributed regarding regions? Can we expect teams from the east fighting for the prizepool?
No details yet on the specific breakdown, but they will be out pretty soon and we will absolutely have Asian qualifier spots. We've actually held off quite a bit on locking those, as there's a lot of interesting discussion about how many Asia should have and what the breakdown should be (KR, SEA, CN etc). Fan feedback definitely plays a role in that so please let me know your thoughts. I read the comments.
What the future holds for ESL regarding Dota 2? How does you evaluate the current state of the scene and its economy?
This is the only event we’re talking about publicly but we are already in talks with large venues globally about our next events. Nothing other than that to discuss right now - let’s get this one in the bag and let our team sleep because i bring up Round 2 :D . Month over month Dota is getting larger and larger and there's nothing to suggest that that trend is slowing down. It’s incredibly exciting - esports games tend to have fairly short life cycles, but it’s clear now that Valve is in Dota 2 for the long run. What’s not to be pumped about?!
Thank you for the interview. Before we let you give any shoutouts you want, tell us how many Disruptors do you predict for the Finals of this event and who would win in a fight between the Dota and League staff at the ESL office.
I don't think anyone actually noticed, but the first thing i did when i got to ESL was shove Disruptor onto the old EMS One branding behind the casters…..So at least 1 Disruptor in Frankfurt if I have my way. You have no idea how happy i am that he’s a legit first ban now...and how disappointed I am that almost every pro I see play him is garbage. I am offering private lessons to all 5s on professional Dota2 teams on how to Glimpse and Kinetic Field properly.
My dota buff is 48% in normal on Disruptor but thats because I always queue with bad teams and am in Elo Hell guys http://dotabuff.com/players/54228762
I’m actually good friends with most of the League casters. I think I could fight and beat all of the league casters except for Joe Miller….old man Brit strength. Sjokz gave me raspberry cheese cake on my birthday last year so I’ll leave her alone in this interview ^^.
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