ESL executive hails Dota 2 ecosystem, World Cup trials, and Birmingham's infamous fans

Birmingham, a city painted with rich culture often associated with bulls, Brummie accents, Indian curries, and football, isn't just a random stop on the esports map. In fact, the tikka masala isn't the only lining of this UK city's underbelly, as a part of Dota 2's history still remains here from its last visit here in 2018.

Among stops around the globe at New York, Kuala Lumpur, Berlin, and more, Birmingham has been Dota 2's perch in the UK, with ESL's Majors and Pro Tour now allowing this beast of an esport to spread its wings again.

Last time, Birmingham served as the chopping block for an OG roster which subsequently led to the dynasty team that won back-to-back TIs and is earmarked as the greatest team ever produced. The repercussions are still spoken of to this day, as ESL Birmingham 2018 remains one of the biggest stories in the entire industry.

Now, ESL has landed back in this esteemed city for its third stop on a renewed calendar and has hailed its history and avid fan base.

GGRecon sat down with ESL Director of Game Ecosystems for Dota 2, Shane Clarke, who opened up about the new Dota 2 ecosystem, an indifferent approach to the Esports World Cup in Riyadh, and the famous personalities forged in Birmingham.

The best community in esports

Dota 2 is a secluded monster when it comes to its community. It's a title which is either completely ignored by gamers, or a title which you devote your life to. There's no in-between, and you seldom dip in and out of Dota to play other MOBAs. The complexity of the game means only the most devoted players can keep up, and that means the fan base and community are the most avid in the industry. 

And for ESL, this makes working on Dota a dream.

"When it comes to the audience, everyone here just loves Dota so much," Clarke said. "They're here to cheer for teams, yes, but also to cheer for the game. Even if their favourite team is out, they'll still show up. That level of engagement is pretty hard to find.

"The game has one of the most dedicated fan bases out there. Personally, I've played 30,000 hours of Dota. I'm like pretty invested in the game. As a result of that, I'm invested in the product."

Out of everywhere that ESL has taken Dota in the past, and everywhere new where they could have taken the Pro Tour instead, Clarke said Birmingham had a pull that couldn't be ignored, and there was unfinished business for the fans.

"When we look at events, the most important thing for us is whether there is an audience in the location that wants to watch Dota 2. We want to make events for an audience. It's what this whole thing is about, right? Everyone here relies on the people to engage with Dota 2.

"There are elements of Birmingham that are interesting. A lot of people are focused on esports, actually, in this region, and there are Universities and partners here too."

With the community as the heart and soul of Dota events, ESL also champions a number of different activations, all of which get lapped up by the fans. Over in Malaysia Major, Clarke said cringe-offs were a fun and entertaining way of appealing the regional personalities.

For Birmingham, the UK's stereotypical alcohol consumption has been leaned into somewhat, with fans being dared to down pints on camera in a kiss-cam-like fashion, while the whole event is even themed on the Hero Brewmaster, a drunken brawler.

ESL tries to launch activations which are appropriate for each audience, but some are universally accepted.

"I think generally most of them are pretty successful, honestly," Clarke continued.

"We have a guy making balloon animals, and this guy is literally a legend. You should see the queue for when the games end for him. It takes him an hour to make a balloon and he sits there all day for 17 hours. People love it. I think the merch is important too.

"We try to cater everything as much as possible towards the fans. The gaming area has this minigame where you can play on the new Intel Arc CPU to play these minigames. But I would say, overall, the most successful one is probably the DHL signs. It's ever-present on the broadcast. Everyone loves writing stupid stuff and getting it on Twitch. People engage with this quite a lot. That's probably the most successful one."

Even the casters and talent have been unmatched in their energy and tokens to England's culture, with a Shakespearean dress-up taking over the main stage.

"There's been a lot of weird requests. They've stopped asking me now though and they just do it," Clarke said. 

"Jenkins sent me a selfie of himself in, I believe, a William Shakespeare outfit, and he's like, 'Who do I look like?' I said, 'Robin Hood' and then he got angry. That's pretty weird. There have been some funny ones over the years, but yeah, that's the most recent one I can think of."

ESL Pro Tour and other circuits make for a healthier Dota 2 

Dota 2 has undergone surgery over the last couple of years though, with its esports circuit losing its staple prize pool for The International, as Valve opted to slash the crowdfunding opportunities.

Instead, third-party organisers like ESL and PGL are now stepping up to the plate to bat, and putting on longer seasonal tours to fill the void.

Yet this is still under scrutiny, as Dota players, fans, and wider esports curiosities, are all waiting to see what the consensus is after this season ends.

But ESL is confident that this is the right move from Valve, and while TI might lose its gloss, it will be more beneficial for the esports scene as a whole going forward.

"When we developed the ESL Pro Tour for Dota 2, around a year and a half ago, it was met with great results. Honestly, better than I expected," Clarke said. "The teams, the fans, everyone, they all jumped on board right away and have been extremely supportive. In my opinion, we deliver a very successful product."

Clarke also thinks that the ecosystem has seen players try harder all year round. "I've personally noticed this a lot actually. I'm happier now than I was before with the ecosystem. Not just because I work for EFG - sure that's a factor - but also because people care more about all events.

Whether it's an EFG event, ESL event, PGL, Valve, the players care more, every event is more important to the fans as well, and that makes everything healthier."

Previously, when an event is a four-hundredth of the prize pool of the next event, you'd be mad to care about it. It created a very, very top-heavy, unbalanced world, and now that's resolved."

The crux of this elongated Dota 2 system though is that TI brings in eyeballs. It brings in sponsors. Everyone wants to see who the benefactors and the beneficiaries will be of the life-changing money.

TI often doubles, triples, and even quintuples viewership of Majors in years gone by. For example, the highest-viewed Major in the last five years, PGL Arlington, peaked at 707,909 fans, while the recent TI (the lowest-viewed Valve event in this same time frame) peaked at 1,442,274 fans.

Now, viewership will need to rise across the board for Dota 2 to be successful, and that means the third-party organisers will have to fight for each set of eyeballs.

"It's very difficult to compete with the owner of the game, you know? I've texted Gabe [Newell] 20 times, but he still hasn't come out on the stage. Joking, that's a lie, haha. I don't look at it as competing against Valve and TI. Essentially, what I mean is the entire Dota ecosystem is important to me, not just ESL events," Clarke said.

"For us to succeed, there needs to be other competitions and elements in the ecosystem that push us forward and create a different viewing experience for the audience, right?

"The prize pool is a factor in viewership, but it's not the only factor. What's most important is the production value, the players, and the teams. I think money was a narrative for Valve for many years with TI being the biggest prize pool in esports, but essentially they just wanted a different direction.

"They wanted to remove the focus on this event and hone in on the game, which in my opinion is the correct strategy for the long-term in Dota. If their game is good, people will play it. I think it's the best, healthy, long-term strategy."

Esports World Cup, a constructors trial

ESL's circuit is all built with the Esports World Cup in mind. The Pro Tour, while serving as different standalone Majors, is all about accruing points for the Saudi Arabia-hosted festival in Riyadh, where the prize pool does increase.

But not necessarily game-by-game. The bulk of the $60 million is being placed into a Formula 1-style constructors championship, where organisations competing in multiple titles will accrue points on placements in respective games and be placed on a leaderboard, worth $20 million.

Clarke continued in our interview to say that the EWC split is a trial, something that has never been done before and is a "cool" concept that should see organisations try even more.

"I think splitting prize money between orgs and players, conceptually is a good idea, right? Because you want to incentivize the org to invest in content, in building the brand of these people, in coverage.

"I think it's a cool idea. We're trying something new, we're trying something that hasn't really been done before. We have freedom. When it comes to the Esports World Cup, we made a ridiculously intense format that we never would have been able to run before."

Tying it all together, Clarke added that he "underestimated" how much weight, narrative, and importance is placed on a circuit, as storylines intertwine over a long period of time, and all of this will be epitomised through ESL One Birmingham, and onwards to the World Cup.

"It's been pretty successful, so far."