The International 2013
| The International | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Genre | Dota 2 eSports tournament |
| Frequency | Annual |
| Venue | KeyArena |
| Location(s) |
Cologne (2011) Seattle (2012–present) |
| Country | United States |
| Years active | 2011–present |
| Inaugurated | August 17 – August 21, 2011 |
| Most recent | August 7 – August 12, 2017 |
| Participants | 18 teams |
| Organized by | Valve Corporation |
| Website | |
| www |
|
The International (TI) is an annual Dota 2 eSports tournament hosted by Valve Corporation, the game's developer. The first tournament took place in Cologne, Germany at Gamescom in 2011 and was held shortly after the public reveal of Dota 2, with a total prize pot of $1.6 million. The second International took place in 2012 at the Benaroya Hall in Seattle, and retained the same $1.6 million prize structure. For the third International in 2013, again at Benaroya Hall, Valve introduced an interactive, digital "compendium" which fans could purchase to follow the event and contribute to the prize pool; which reached a $2.8 million prize pool with $1.2 million added from compendium purchases.
The fourth International, this time held at the larger Seattle venue KeyArena in 2014, continued the practice of compendium sales and ultimately broke records for having one of the largest prize pool in eSports history, with a total of $10.9 million. The fifth International took place in 2015, with the prize pool totaling over $18 million, making it the largest eSports prize pool for a single tournament until being surpassed by the sixth International the following year, with a prize pool of over $20 million.
Valve announced the first edition of The International on August 1, 2011. 16 teams were invited to compete in the tournament, which would also serve as the first public viewing of Dota 2, and it was streamed online with commentary in four languages; English, Chinese, German, and Russian. The tournament was funded by Valve, including the $1 million USD grand prize, with Nvidia supplying the hardware. It took place at Gamescom in Cologne from August 17 to 21 the same year.
The tournament started with a group stage in which the winners of each of the four groups were entered into a winner's bracket, and the other teams entered the loser's bracket. The rest of the tournament was then played as a double-elimination tournament. The final of this first tournament was between Ukrainian team Natus Vincere and Chinese team EHOME, with Natus Vincere winning the grand prize after beating EHOME in three out of the four matches. Runner's up EHOME won a second place prize of $250,000 USD and the other top eight teams split the remaining prize pool of $350,000 USD.
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