User:Thomastome/Sandbox/International

The International was a double-elimination live tournament between 16 professional DOTA teams, with a total prize pool of $1.6 million and a first-place prize of $1 million USD. The event took place between 17-21 August 2011 in Cologne, Germany - at the Gamescon convention. The International was the first public viewing of Dota 2.

Teams
The roster for The International was as follows:

Shoutcasters
The shoutcasters for The International were as follows:

Live
The tournament was broadcast live in a total of four different languages: English, Chinese, German and Russian. In addition to this, a stream without a shoutcaster was made available, which used Valve's new Dota TV director to choose what should be shown. Due to the amazingly large demand placed on streams, Valve relied on several different content streamers to deliver the footage across the globe.

Archive
In addition to streaming the matches live, Valve set up a youtube channel that contains video replays of all matches after the group stages, including the commentaries for all languages available during the live streams. These replays can be accessed at the following sites:
 * http://www.dota2.com/tournaments/international/results
 * http://www.youtube.com/user/dota2
 * http://u.youku.com/user_show/id_UMzY0MTc0MzE2.html

The replays from The International also available in-game, allowing you to take advantage of the various spectating features, whilst still being able to listen to the commentaries made during the live casts.

Trivia

 * At the time, The International had the biggest prize ever awarded in the history of eSports, with a total prize pool of $1.6 million USD.
 * In addition to this, The International also had the largest number of concurrent viewers than has been seen in any other tournament to this date, with over 1.5 million people watching the opening rounds, a large number of these viewing from China.