Dota 2: The global Stream Schedule

By the time this week is over, one out of 16 teams, which earned their place in this tournament with many qualifying matches, will make it through the brackets to the grand finals, where it will compete for the top honor and nearly $6.5 million. Last year’s tally made The worldwide one of the biggest sporting events on the planet. Let’s all take a moment to marvel at ESPN putting even a tiny amount of weight behind a PC game tournament. Though it’s hardly directly comparable, it’s interesting to note that the U.S. biggest sporting event, The Super Bowl, pays out a bounty of .5 million to the victors. “What were we doing?”

But their form in the group stages ended up being relatively poor and that culminated in their defeat against Virtus Pro earlier today. Spectators can choose from commentary streams in a range of languages, and also hand over to accompanying camera direction for the commentary if they wish to simply sit back and enjoy the action. For those unaware, Dota 2 by Valve is a multiplayer online battle arena video game.

Valve raises money for The International’s prize pool with crowdfunding. With a prize pool of $17.8 million dollars on the line, TI5 will no doubt offer the highest level of eSports entertainment.

Millions of people play DOTA 2, but what about the many, like me, who never have.

Each match will begin immediately after the last one has concluded. The first team to use their combined powers to destroy an Ancient at the heart of their enemies’ base wins. Fans can also attend several pub crawls, and over 400 theaters across the United States the are screening the event. More information and tickets here. Controversy of drug testing has even hit the e-game industry, as players have been called out for being under the influence during tournaments which triggered the required tests.