Things ESL did right with dream league s19

1. Prize pool distribution

They have a 1M tournament and the winner gets 30% of the pot. Compare that to TI where winner gets 45% but more importantly 2nd place gets 3x less than 1st place.

Let's not forget that every team (from last place to 1st place) is getting paid so you have better payment distribution and you're also paying everyone which sounds obvious but in this day and age we still have almost every tournament not doing this.

DL19:

1st place (30%)

2nd place (17%)

3rd place (12%)

4th place (8.5%)

TI:11

1st place (45%)

2nd place (13%)

3rd place (9%)

4th place (6%)

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2. Smart financial decision

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They are already hosting the major and so they will pay for the flight tickets of all the teams going to Europe. The teams at the same time want to go earlier to scrim so they get to organize a tournament with the best teams in the world with a fraction of the cost while they are also test driving all of the production and talent aspects of the big tournament

3. Patch timing

I have no idea whether they were aware of the patch dates prior to organizing the event but one thing is for certain. During ESL Malaysia last year they did the same thing, having the tournament happen during a major patch (pre TI centaur aghs one) so I'm assuming this one was intentional and this will draw a lot of eye balls. I think they wanted to have tiebrakers with the patch dropping but surprisingly this format that made them very likely ended up not working.

They will still have finals with 4 of the best teams in the world during a major patch, the dream.

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4. Community perception

At the end of the day they organized a tournament with very low overhead considering the caliber of the teams involved while gaining points with the community for the perceived high quality of production (which honestly they deserve) and that comes mostly from the fact that content production wise they are the current kings (at least with dota2).

A lot of people like to praise we play for the quality of the tournament and I think they did really well in terms of set design, clothes, theme and video but content wise I don't think they are better than ESL.