In the past few days, the DOTA 2 Esport agenda got quite busy, with the reveal of 4 major tournaments : Dreamhack Summer, joinDOTA League with MLG, ESL One and Valve’s very own International 5 qualifiers.
But the announcements were not met with the expected hype and cheers. They even were welcomed with a negative feeling : all those great events will happen in the same month of June, making it hard for teams to attend them all and fans to follow them all, while the rest of the year suddenly feels empty of major events.
This June, 4 major DOTA 2 events will collide :
- June 13th-16th
- (announced August 14th 2014)
- Elmia, Jönköping, Sweden
- June 26th-28th
- (announced December 4th 2014)
- est. USA
- June 20th-21st
- (announced August 12th 2014)
- Frankfurt, Germany
The International 5
- Qualifiers est. June 7th-14th
- (announced December 15th 2014)
- est. Seattle, USA
And we’re just talking about the ones we know as of today. As this situation already happened last year, the community, from fans to pro gamers like EternalEnvy, got upset.
On the organizers’ side, things a more complicated. Schedules conflicts are no new stuff. Finding, booking and getting a correct time and a free slot for an event location, dealing with all other events using those locations, from sports, to live music, to conferences etc. The right days are scarce.
Still, a tournament could be Jeopardized, if no top tier team shows up. Would attend or support Dreamhack Summer, if all the best teams are on the other side of the globe, trying to qualify for the much larger International 5 ?
As long as Esport agenda is made by independant organizers dealing with their own and without concertation, we might witness some more tournament traffic jams.
Each Esport discipline should find a way to build and tune its season, like Tennis does with the ATP circuit, spreading the major tournaments across the year.
In the meantime, let’s hope June doesn’t become a DOTA overdose.