Summer is the time when the best teams in the esports business compete at The International, the biggest Dota 2 event. Unfortunately, the International was cancelled due to ongoing pandemic. Valve decided against moving the event online in the interest of postponing the event for next year.
Fortunately, Epic Esports Events and WePlay! Esports have teamed up to “build something special for the fans.” Omega League is a massive online Dota 2 tournament prize pool of $550,000, that will run from July 20th, 2020 (the beginning of the Open Qualifiers) until September 6th. Omega 2 is not the official replacement of The International for 2020 since Valve is not involved in organizing the tournament. However, thanks to the massive scale and lack of the International, Omega League will get the same attention as the International in 2020.
For open qualifiers, the tournament will be separated into the regions of Europe and the Americas. The main event will be the Immortal Division, which features a prize pool of $500,000. Twelve teams will be divided into groups of 6. Each team will play every other team in their group in a BO3 series. The two best teams of each group will advance to the Playoffs in an elimination bracket. Teams that lose in the Play-in Stage advance to Divine Playoffs Upper-Bracket Round 2. The teams that take sixth place in their group advance to Divine Playoffs Upper-Bracket Round 1.
Divine Divison is the second competition with a Prize pool of $50,000. The same pattern as Immortal Divison will be followed.
WePlay will take on the charge of English commentary and broadcast for the tournament while RuHub will be in charge of its Russian counterpart.
Vitaliy “Nexius” Bozhko, Lead Esports Manager at WePlay! Esports, commented on the venture in a release: “We are excited about the opportunity to work on interesting ideas and very curious about the reaction of the community. Our team and colleagues from Epic Esports Events are giving this event everything that we have. I really hope the audience will enjoy the results. The event takes place on the dates when we are used to seeing The International, and that impacts the level of responsibility we feel about OMEGA LEAGUE.”
Omega League has aims to fill the void created by the lack of a major scale tournament for Dota 2 in Summer 2020. It’s a successful example of another major esports league moving online.