ESL announces official Dota 2 event to take place in Birmingham in 2024
13 December 2023
Just a few weeks after the announcement of London’s O2 Arena as location for the 2024 League of Legends World Championship Final, the next big esports event to come to the United Kingdom next year has already been revealed. ESL, the company behind the hugely popular Dota 2 game, published a video on its own Youtube channel on Tuesday, December 12th, to officially announce the ESL One Birmingham 2024 event. This means that, after an absence of no less than four years, ESL is returning to the UK with a big Dota 2 event. Like that, the 2024 for esports in the UK for next year is starting to look better and better for fans and players in the region.
(For those interested, you can find the link to the Youtube announcement here)
Million-dollar prize pool
The ESL announcement comes as the 2023 ESL One event in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, is in fill swing. From December 11th to December 17th, the best Dota 2 teams and players from all over the world are competing in the Malaysian capital for a share of the prize pool of one million American dollars in total. Thanks to the announcement of ESL One Birmingham 2024, we now know that the same amount of prize money will be guaranteed for the next edition as well, which will be taking place in the British Midlands from April 22nd to April 28th.
Despite its status as a prestigious Dota 2 event, these are the highest prize pools ever for the ESL One tournaments, which are being organised since 2014. The ESL One Berlin Major 2023, for example, which was played from April 26th to May 7th this year, boasted a $ 500.000 prize pool, while the ESL One event before that in Malaysia got a guaranteed prize pool of $ 400.000.
Qualifying stages
ESL One Birmingham 2024 will feature twelve of the best Dota 2 teams in the world. The top-4 of the overall leaderboard automatically receive an invite for the event, while the remaining eight slots will be filled with the winners from a set of Open and Closed Qualifiers. These qualifying battles will take place on the FACEIT platform, starting with the Open Qualifiers from January 22nd tot January 25th, 2024. From January 26th to January 30th then, the Closed Qualifiers will be played to fill the last remaining slots for ESL One Birmingham 2024.
“The Dota 2 community, especially in the UK, has truly proven itself for being fun-loving, engaged with the show, and not afraid to get involved”, said Shane Clarke, Director Game Ecosystems - Dota 2 at ESL FACEIT Group, the event’s organiser, “Bringing live Dota 2 to Birmingham once again, we are therefore thrilled to create more memorable and electrifying moments for fans, not just for those uniting at the Resorts World Arena next April, but also for those joining us from their homes around the globe.”