SEA Dota will be getting a much-needed injection of competition this December, as several new sponsors have stepped up to organise a LAN event in Singapore, with a minimum $50,000 SGD (~US$40,000) prizepool.
In a show of things to come, OK.-, a Swedish drinks manufacturer, will be joining hands with some other sponsors and Singaporean organisers to organise the LAN in South East Asia with the largest prizepool thus far. The OK.- Dota 2 Cup will take place on 26-28 December 2014, and will be held at the Suntec City Convention Center in Singapore.
The OK.- Dota 2 Cup boasts a prizepool of at least SG$50,000 (~US$40,000), and there will be three injections of cash to the prizepool to grow it even larger. The first will be the traditional Dota TV Ticket, of which further details will be announced soon. The second will be OK.- chipping in SG$0.50 for every can of their drink sold from now until the LAN event at any participating LAN Cafes. The third will be the online apparel store FreeKnot that have pledged to inject 25% of all their sales proceeds from now until the event into the prizepool.
The Dota 2 Cup will feature 6 invited top teams from the region and 2 teams from local qualifiers. This is the largest prizepool ever for a single LAN event in South East Asia yet. The qualifiers will be held at the end of October and November, and will be for Singaporean Citizens and PRs only. The winners of these two qualifiers will join the six invited teams to play at the main event in December. The qualifiers will each have a $1,600 prizepool, with $1,000 going to the winner, $500 to the runners-up and $100 to the third-placed team. The qualifier winners will each make it to the main event on top of the $1,000 cash prize.
The local qualifiers will be held on LAN at the JCube Gaming Cybercafe, and the upcoming Qualifier will be held on 24-26 October. There are only spaces for 32 teams for each qualifier, and the teams will be placed in a group stage to play round-robin best of 1s. The top team from each of the 8 groups will progress to a single-elimination BO1 bracket, with a BO3 finals to determine who makes it to the main event. More information and registration for the LAN event can be found here.
The second and third placed teams at each qualifier will be seeded into the upcoming OK.- Dota 2 League, which will begin in 2015. League registrations and information are not fully available yet, and will be announced at a later date. In general, the league will feature four seasons, in which teams will compete for $5,000 each season. The league will act as a funnel system for the next Dota 2 Cup, which is scheduled for December 2015.
The LAN event itself will feature a bunch of alternative attractions, such as the presence of Dota 2 pros and casters like Danil 'Dendi' Ishutin, Bruno 'The Statsman' Carlucci and Toby 'TobiWan' Dawson. Also in the works are a Cosplay competition featuring the best in Singapore, as well as retail and exhibition booths.
Photo of Bruno & Dendi from Tammy 'Furryfish' Tang.
