Valve Run Dota 2 Tournament The International 4 Announced
After months of rumours and speculation Valve have finally revealed details about The International 4, the biggest DOTA tournament so far.
The International 4 will run from July 18th to the 21st and will be held in the Key Arena. The Key Arena is a 17,000-seat stadium located in Seattle and is a lot bigger than the previous venue for The International. Strangely the tournament only seems to run for 4 days, one day less than previous years. This has lead to speculation there could be a change of format for the tournament as previously it was a struggle to complete it in 5 days.
Tickets for TI4 will go on sale this Friday (April 4th) and will start at $99 for general admission, floor seats will be available for $199 and a VIP package will be available for $499. Tickets will be sold via TicketMaster so hopefully there wont be the stress of previous years.
Valve has also confirmed that they will be inviting 11 teams directly to the tournament with 5 others coming through qualification routes. There will be 4 different qualifying events (one for each major area) whilst the runners up from each area will fight it out for the 5th spot.
The Compendium will also be making a welcome return and will likely result in an even bigger prize pool than last year. However details about the prize pool and the compendium are yet to be revealed.
As expected the whole tournament will be broadcasted for free (presumably in the DOTA 2 client again) and will features casters of many languages. No casters have been officially revealed but I’m sure you can have some good guesses at who will be present.
