The end of The International era and the prospects of gaming in Saudi Arabia — Dota 2 esports dynamics analysis

The International 2023 marked the end of another Dota 2 esports season. A lot has happened in 2023 in regards to Dota's competitive scene — South America hosted its first Major, Russian-speaking community casters gathered a record audience, The International lost its status as the most lucrative tournament of the season, and the Dota Pro Circuit leagues were abolished altogether. However, despite all the changes and problems, the discipline continues to demonstrate a stable audience reach: this year it even grew slightly compared to the previous season. General comparison of seasons The 2023 tournament season of Dota 2 amassed 354.8 million Hours Watched, which is approximately 6.17% more than in the 2021/22 season. This includes all tournaments for the game held between events of The International series, not just the Dota Pro Circuit leagues and Majors. The growth in Hours Watched is attributed to several factors, but the main one is the increase in the number of Majors. In 2022, only two Majors in Stockholm and Arlington were hosted, whereas in 2023, Majors were held three times: in Lima, Berlin, and Bali. Additionally, the number of third-party tier-1 tournaments has increased, primarily with the three seasons of DreamLeague. Previously, DreamLeague was part of the regional DPC league, but now they are standalone tournaments with decent prize pools (they offer twice as much prize money as Majors). Twitch remained the most popular streaming platform for Dota 2 esports. In 2023, the platform accounted for 270.1 million Hours Watched, which is about 5.7% more than last season. At the same time, Twitch's share relative to other platforms remained virtually unchanged at 76%. One thing that stands out is the growing popularity of YouTube. In 2023, the platform accumulated around 64.1 million HW, which is a staggering 26.3% increase from the previous season. Compared to other platforms, YouTube's share grew from 15.2% to 18.1% over the year. Tournament organizers and studios have realized that they have reached almost the entire esports audience on Twitch, so they have started paying more attention to other platforms. For example, while there was no official broadcast on YouTube for ESL One Stockholm Major 2022, ESL One Berlin Major 2023 not only had a broadcast, but it also attracted 56K Peak Viewers, making it the best result among YouTube channels and the fourth best among all 190 channels covering the tournament (including platforms like Twitch, Trovo, etc.). There are also quite mundane reasons. For example, in countries with expensive internet, viewers prefer to watch broadcasts on YouTube, as mobile operators provide unlimited traffic to the most popular services and messengers. This practice is very common in Peru, where The Lima Major 2023 took place earlier this year. Language dynamics In 2023, Russian-language broadcasts finally surpassed English-language ones in terms of viewership. The Top 3 leaders remained unchanged, with Russian language now occupying first place. At the end of the season, its share accounted for approximately 41.2% of the total Hours Watched in all Dota 2 tournaments (compared to 36.5% in the previous season). As for English-language broadcasts, their share decreased from 40.4% to 36.1%. Spanish-language broadcasts maintained third place in terms of Hours Watched, increasing their share from 5.6% to 8.2% over the year, mainly thanks to the first Major in Peru. Among other languages, Indonesian fell out of the Top 5, with its share dropping from 3.7% to 1.8%. At the same time, the Ukrainian language showed growth from 0.75% to 1.96% and ranked sixth among all languages in Dota 2 at the end of the year. If we consider not the proportions but the total numbers, Russian-language broadcasts increased by 19.8% compared with the previous season. A combination of factors played a role here. Firstly, the number of Russian-speaking players increased at tournaments. We are talking not only about teams from Eastern Europe, but also about Russian-speaking legionnaires who play in other regions. At The International 2023 there were as many as 19 players from Russia, which was a record in the history of the tournament series. Secondly, the teams themselves began to perform better. Team Spirit won two of the biggest tournaments this year — The International 2023 and Riyadh Masters 2023. The second important factor is the media opportunities for Russian-speaking teams. Many of them are sponsored by betting companies, which have a special need for media promotion. For this purpose, they spare no budget, so they actively organize various giveaways, show matches, and collaborations with popular bloggers, streamers, analysts, Telegram channels, etc. BetBoom even has its own studio and the rights to cover major tournaments. All these efforts together are aimed at attracting a new audience. Broadcast channels and community casting at DPC tournaments In the list of the most popular broadcast channels on the Dota Pro Circuit tournaments, Russian-speaking studios and community casters are leading. At the end of the season, first place was taken by the Russian streamer Nix, the most popular caster in the discipline. He amassed 34.8 million Hours Watched, which accounts for approximately 9.8% of the total number of all tournaments. In comparison, in the previous season, Nix took second place with a result of 21.2 million HW and a share of 6.36%. The second place goes to the studio channel dota2_paragon_ru, where the official Russian broadcasts were conducted. The share of this channel in the current season was just over 7%. Third place in the ranking belongs to NS, another Russian community caster. Compared to the previous season, he increased his HW number from 16.4 million to 24.1 million. Consequently, his share of broadcasts in the DPC season grew from 4.9% to 6.8%. The betboom_ru channel almost doubled the number of Hours Watched, which allowed it to get to fourth place in the ranking. The English-language channel esl_dota2 rounds out the Top 5. In general, if we look at the dynamics, the share of community casting is gradually increasing at DPC tournaments. In the 2021/22 season, it was 42.5%, and in the 2023 season, it increased to almost 47%. The ratio of official broadcasts to community casters has almost reached parity within the DPC season. At some tournaments, independent streamers accumulate even more Hours Watched than the official studio channels. For example, this was the case at The Lima Major 2023 and The Bali Major 2023. Distribution of prize pools by tournament series In the 2023 season, the total prize money distributed at tournaments amounted to approximately $29.6 million. This is roughly $3 million fewer than in the 2021/22 season. The difference may seem small, but in reality the changes are more significant. Previously, the entire Dota 2 esports scene revolved around a single tournament — The International. Often, it didn't matter how you performed during the season, as the main focus was on showing results at the World Championship, where record prize pool was at stake. In 2023, this paradigm shifted, and it seems that shortly, The International may lose its status as the key tournament of the season. The main problem with The International 2023 was the small prize pool. Shortly before the World Championship, Valve announced that they would release the TI 2023 compendium without the traditional cosmetic items. Because of this, the demand for it was low, and the tournament received a weak increase in the prize pool. As a result, only $3.1 million was awarded at The International 2023, while teams fought for $18.9 million at The International 2022. For 11 consecutive years, The International series has been the discipline's all-time leader in prize pools, but that era has now come to an end. So what will be next? The answer may come from Saudi Arabia: Riyadh Masters pleased the teams with a prize pool of $15 million this year. This event was the largest tournament of the year in the discipline in terms of prize money. It is expected that in 2024, Saudi Arabia will continue to develop the Riyadh Masters franchise, and new tournaments will finally secure its status as the richest series in Dota 2 (and maybe in esports in general). In addition to the appearance of a new super-tournament, the number of tier-1 tournaments that are not included in the DPC season has also increased. Last season ESL held only one such event with a prize of $400K, but in 2023, DreamHack organized three seasons of DreamLeague, where they offered a million dollars each. It's no secret the DreamHack brand belongs to ESL FACEIT Group, which in 2022 was bought by Savvy Games Group Holding Company which, in turn, belongs to the Public Investment Fund, the Sovereign Wealth Fund of Saudi Arabia. Whichever way you look at it, it all seems like Saudi Arabia is planning to become the new capital of world esports. It's still difficult to say what the Dota 2 competitive season will be like in 2024, but with the Dota Pro Circuit leagues shutting down, we can expect to see big changes on the professional scene. Players expect more independent tier-1 tournaments to emerge. And they will be organized not only by big studios like PGL, ESL or DreamHack, but also by betting companies.

The end of The International era and the prospects of gaming in Saudi Arabia — Dota 2 esports dynamics analysis

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