Dota 2 Champions League have added milestones to their ticket sales in order to attract more buyers. The final milestone will allow users to vote for the city in which the finals of season three will be held.
Amongst the more prestigious returning Dota 2 tournament series, Dota 2 Champions League is one of the youngest with the second season currently being in the second week. Utilizing a large base prize pool ($50,000) as well as using the now basically mandatory ticket share system to buff up the prize pool further, it is a significally well paid tournament and is only featuring western elite teams. So far Empire and Liquid are leading the groups but half the matches still remain to be played. Liquid for instance only has one match yet to play (versus Virtus.Pro) and might lose their top seed to a team such as Natus Vincere. The two teams met earlier tonight in a superb best of three series where all games delivered high level entertaining Dota.
The matches continue tomorrow with Alliance versus Fnatic, a match-up seen quite a lot in the recent months. The teams more or less take turns beating one another and it is often hard to predict the winner beforehand. The tournament goes on break for two days after that and will return on Sunday with Cloud9 and Na`Vi.
The adminstration released milestones for their ticket sales tonight. Similar to those of The International 3, they will deliver certain things once a specific target has been reached. Arguably, the milestones of TI had much more impact since it was Valve, the actual game developer, running them where the top target would allow users to vote for the next hero to be implemented into the game itself. Dota 2 Championship League lacks that certain impact but instead their top target will let the users decide in which city the finals for next season (season 3) will take place. The milestones prior to the final one will enable showmatches, one-vs-one tournaments as well as a smaller championship using the Ability Draft mode. All those would of course be played be pro players already participating in the regular tournament.
Milestone 5 – 50 000 tickets sold
1st - $87 500
2nd - $43 750
3rd - $26 250
4th - $17 500
Viewers select the city-host of season three LAN-finals, the options are
Kiev
Moscow
Stockholm
Cologne
Paris
Valencia
There are currently about 22,500 tickets sold, thus almost completing the requirements for the first milestone which is half of the total requirements for the fifth and final one. The milestones are another way of integrating the tournament with the audience, allowing them to affect the product as well as providing a direct income source for the tournament organizers. Both these things were first introduced in Dota 2 with Valve's The International 3 and as predicted for 2014, is becoming a more substantial part of the third party scene.
Source: D2CL, Steam store
