Introducing Before the Horn, a News feature where we’ll be sharing some insights into the challenges, and occasional happy accidents we encounter when creating events for a game as complicated and expansive as DOTA 2.
We hope you’re as excited as we are for ESL One Birmingham, now just a few months away! If you haven’t got your tickets, don’t wait! There are many things we’re trying to make this the best ESL One yet (announcements coming soon!) — but while our efforts tick along, today we wanted to share some insight into the work that goes on Before the Horn blows in the arena, the various considerations that make up the beginnings of an esports tournament, and some of the problems that we face on our way there.
So, what's new?
The biggest change that we’ve made for our next ESL One is that we’ll have 4 more teams in attendance. Why more teams? Our goal is always for ESL One to become the biggest and best it can be. More teams means more Dota, more opportunities to interact with fans, and more chances for teams to qualify.
That was the philosophy of the Majors and the philosophy we aspire to assimilate. With Closed Qualifiers recently concluded, click here to check out which teams you’ll be able to see at the event in March!
This change isn’t as simple as someone in management saying ‘I want 4 more teams’ and it happening — there are many logistics to consider. We don’t want to bore you but we’d like to show you a glimpse of what this process looks like.
The first step is ensuring that our tournament format can sustain 16 teams with the constraints already set. We really wanted to come back to Birmingham and that means that we only had three days available for our main event. Our Tournament Management Team works tirelessly thinking of formats that would fit within those restrictions and, sometimes, simple is best - an expansion of the group stage by a single day. Once we figure out what the tournament schedule looks like, we can proceed with our Operations Team who ensure that we have a space ready and catering for the extra teams and extra day. Then, our Travel Team ensures availability of hotels and flights, calculating potential routes and checking to see what hotels would suit players’ needs best. It’s only once all this pre-work is done that we can actually start organizing the event.
To make matters more complicated (better? More exciting, let’s say) we’re very lucky to have DreamHack Birmingham as our expo area for this event — with every fan that buys an ESL One ticket getting full access to DreamHack for the entire weekend. Which is more work for us to coordinate, but more rewarding to see it complete!
Getting them in, Keeping them around
Once the tournament is planned out, we’ve figured out what our own blueprints mean, and the qualifiers have gone smoothly, you’d think the worst of our troubles are over — and then come the visa issues.
In some situations, these issues just can't be resolved, so we always ensure that potential replacement teams also look into visas in the event of the worst case scenario. But there are steps that we always make available, so that as long as teams communicate with us in advance, their players have the best chance of making it to the event. These steps include:
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Personal invitation letters to each player
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Hotel Reservations in advance
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Flights booked in advance
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Specified event itineraries
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Additional supporting documents from the host city (though this option isn’t always available)
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Embassy and consulate outreach to try and expedite visa appointments — though there’s never a guarantee that this will move the process along
We’re no strangers to visa issues, which has helped us learn how best to prevent them. Before our qualifiers for ESL One Birmingham even began we had already reached out to most of the teams that met the criteria of a.)were strong qualification contenders and b.)would require visas to attend. This ensured that teams had ample time to apply and had the documents ready before they were even needed. An Open Qualifier Cinderella story is great for the viewers and always excites us — but it also sends our Operations into disarray, so our best bet is to ensure that everyone else is covered, ensuring that we can support those outliers the best we can.
Still, after all this, there’s an even harder challenge: Getting the teams to stick around once they get here. It’s not surprising really; your team has just lost, you might be feeling responsible, the last thing you probably want to do is go into the very arena you’ve just missed out on playing in, with thousands of Dota fans cheering for someone else...
But these events exist for the fans that go to them. The reason we want to bring more teams to our events is to create more opportunities for the fans that come to our events to meet and interact with their favourite teams, players and coaches. In-person Dota events — at their best — are magic (especially after a few beers) and every extra player helps us to create that magic. That’s why we have booked the hotel rooms and practice rooms for all teams for the whole duration of the event, win or lose, and we have encouraged them all to come to the arena for meet and greets, fan activations, and to watch the games so that they can get cheered up by you all even if they don’t make it to the playoffs.
We're super excited about ESL One Birmingham 2026, and hope to see all of you there at the playoffs — with players from all 16 teams ready to bring you the best weekend you can imagine! Until then, make sure you follow us on X, Instagramie, i Facebooku to get the latest announcements and news.