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| How ‘Dota 2’ Fans Funded One of the World’s Richest Sporting Events Posted: 07 Aug 2015 06:00 AM PDT The FIFA World Cup. The Super Bowl. The World Series. It's time to add another sporting event to the list of the world's richest tournaments: The International, also known as Valve's annual International Dota 2 Championships. Teams are competing on PCs equipped with specially selected NVIDIA GeForce GTX GPUs and viewing the action on displays equipped with NVIDIA G-SYNC technology. While most multi-million dollar sporting events are funded by sponsorships from big brands, The International's $18 million prize pool — up from last year's $10.9 million pool — is funded almost entirely by fans. Watch live video from dota2ti on www.twitch.tv That kind of bottom-up enthusiasm has propelled eSports into the mainstream. Just look at the numbers. Last year, Riot Games' League of Legends World Championships pulled in 27 million streaming views. That's more than the viewership for an average game during last year's World Series. And where audiences go, revenues follow. The worldwide eSports market will generate an estimated $612 million in revenues this year. In North America alone, big brands will spend $111 million on sponsorships this year, according to SuperData Research. There's no better example of how gaming's legions of high-energy fans are driving eSports into the mainstream than The International.  Dota 2 — a sequel to Defense of the Ancients, a popular Warcraft mod — pits teams of players wielding medieval weapons and magic against one another in fast-moving matches whose fast and fluid action seem made for broadcast. Fans fund the tournament by buying an item dubbed "The Compendium," which unleashes in-game items and extras. One quarter of the proceeds from the sale of The Compendium, which starts at $9.99, go to funding The International. That fan-driven model has propelled The International into rarefied company. While the ranking of richest sporting events varies from year to year — depending on the sums raised from sponsors — The International is among the top five. Only a handful of events — including the UEFA Champions League ($65 million in winnings), the FIFA World Cup ($31 million) and baseball's World Series ($19 million) — reward winners more richly. Even Super Bowl participants take home a total of less than $11 million in prize money. Twenty million people are expected to tune in on Twitch.tv, YouTube, Steam Broadcasting and WatchESPN to watch the fast-moving, multiplayer magic and mayhem, taking place live at Seattle's Key Arena this week. Newbie? The International is hosting a daily broadcast with special commentary aimed at helping Dota 2 newcomers grok what they're seeing. And with the winning five-player team taking home a jaw-dropping $6.5 million, the stakes, at least, will need no explanation. The post How 'Dota 2' Fans Funded One of the World's Richest Sporting Events appeared first on The Official NVIDIA Blog.    |
| INTZ: The Boys from Brazil Visit Our GeForce eSports Studio Posted: 06 Aug 2015 01:00 PM PDT Overhearing League of Legends players talk about their play is like listening to sports commentary from the planet Kepler 41-b. And — if you have an unpracticed eye — the action is even more incomprehensible. It's a magnificent blur of motion and mayhem. Even die-hard players can be shocked at how fast momentum can change in the hugely popular online game that pits teams of players against one another in stadium-filling matches. But the human part of the story is as old as team sports. And INTZ might be the best tale in League of Legends right now. The upstart São Paulo team stormed through the early rounds of Brazil's League of Legends championships earlier this year, upsetting more established teams that for years have dominated the League of Legends scene in the eSports-mad nation. Glory DaysThe story behind the story: Lucas Almeida. At 30, he's over the hill, by pro gaming standards. But the hulking six-foot-two Brazilian entrepreneur with a ready laugh remains a gamer's gamer. In college at Universidade Paulista, in São Paulo, he was a pro gamer who turned down a chance to join the legendary Brazilian team that grabbed the Call of Duty world championship more than a decade ago. "If I'd played a little more," Almeida says, looking wistful for a moment. "I could have been a world champion." Since then, he's gone on to build Cachorro Gato, Brazil's leading online marketplace for pet owners. But like many former athletes, Almeida couldn't let go. So he co-founded INTZ and recruited gamers from around Brazil — and two from outside Brazil — in an effort to become the best of the best. And if it hasn't yet brought him to the pinnacle of professional gaming's toughest challenge, it has brought him to NVIDIA.  "We are really happy NVIDIA invited us to come," says Almeida. "Every hour here is an opportunity to make our game better." Late last month, we hosted Almeida's elite five-man "main" team — one of three that INTZ fields — at our GeForce eSports Studio in Silicon Valley. The studio gives gamers access to top-of-the line GeForce-powered battle stations and blazing-fast internet connections. It also gives NVIDIANs — and our own in-house League of Legends team — a taste of how this top teams plays. (To save ourselves embarrassment, we'll omit the details of their matches.) INTZ is the first. More are coming. Over six days at NVIDIA, INTZ took on a host of North American teams — ones that are too far away to set up matches with in Brazil. They stuck to a grueling schedule that saw them play one of North America's top teams within an hour of getting off a 15-hour flight from Brazil. They grabbed a quick win in their first game before falling 2-1. Serious BusinessIt's the culmination of a journey that reveals just how big a deal League of Legends has become. These players — with handles like Alocs, Tockers and Jockster — aren't gamers passing time in their parent's basements. Players like Felipe "Yang" Zhao and Luan "Jockster" Cardoso are stone cold digital killers. The stakes are high: so far they've racked up more than $100,000 in winnings at the 2015 International Wild Card Invitational and the Circuito Brasileiro de League of Legends 2015, the first split in the Brazilian League – Champions Series. And they're all eager to match their skills against the world's best.  Like any pro athletes they play — and train — full time at INTZ's São Paulo gaming house. Their roles on the team — midlaner, jungler and carry — are familiar to any League of Legends player, even if their skills are next level. "That moment you get the opportunity to overhear a team captain go over a match with their team, you realize how noob you are," NVIDIAN Clay Causin marveled on Facebook as he watched them operate from our GeForce eSports Studio. Now the players are on the cusp. On Aug. 8, they'll appear before an audience of more than 15,000 screaming fans for a shot at the Brazilian championship. If they clinch it, they'll go on to face the best of the best in the League of Legends world championship later this year. And — like so many entrepreneurs who have built sports teams — Almeida will have a taste of the glory that evaded him 14 long years ago. The post INTZ: The Boys from Brazil Visit Our GeForce eSports Studio appeared first on The Official NVIDIA Blog.   |
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