152/356: Buying An Esports Ticket

On Monday I did something I couldn't really picture myself doing just a few weeks back.

There is a game. This game is called DOTA2. I started playing it about two months back. Why did I start? Because I heard that the a game called League of Legends just broke the all time high of concurrent players. Both games are a new genre that is called MOBA. I thought if a game can attract that many players, there has to be something about it. As it happened DOTA2 hat just come out of beta so I gave it a spin.
Boy is the game fun!

Around the that time there was a big international DOTA2 tournament going on. The winning team walked away with a mind boggling 1,2 million dollars.. yeah let that sink in for a moment. One, point two, million US Dollars! The price pool in total was 2,5 million US Dollars.

I had never watched Esports before but since I had just started playing the game I was intrigued and I started watching the games of the tournament. I was hooked instantly. I spent the whole weekend watching one game after another and ever since I spend more time watching competitive DOTA2 games than I watch "regular" sports.

And I don't seem to be the only one. The tournament I am watching right now has over 30'000 viewers on the streams and that is only the English one (the Russian is just as popular).

You can watch these games on Dailymotion or Twitch. But what I did for the first time on Monday was, I got a ticket to watch the game in the game client itself. The benefit of that is that I have a small chance of winning in game cosmetic items and that it runs much smoother then when watching over the sites mentioned above.

I have spent about six hours watching the games so far and plan to watch many more until the finals in Sweden at Dreamhack in three weeks time. I think that is nine dollars well spent. 

I know, reading this with having no idea what a MOBA or DOTA2 or even Esports is, might be confusing. I suggest you hit google if you want to know more.. or just send me a message.

Now back to watch that game I have running on the second screen.