Elite League Preview

Elite League is a Dota 2 event scheduled to take place online between March 31 – April 14.

Despite the online aspect of it, this tournament still offers $1 million in prize money and features 24 teams. So make no mistake, this is a tier-1 Dota 2 competition that may turn out to be as exciting as the group stage of The International.

Format and dates

Elite League will be played in three stages, in a way that’s very similar to that of a CS2 Major. Eight of the 24 teams enter the race only in stage 2. The first stage is a modified Swiss System with best-of-three matches. The top eight teams advance to the next stage.

The second stage consists of two groups of eight teams. The round-robin format is used. Every match is a best-of-two series. The top two teams advance to the upper bracket of the playoffs. The 3^rd – 4^th place teams advance to the lower bracket. The bottom four teams are eliminated.

So a third of participants are eliminated in stage 1 and another third in stage 2. In the playoffs, every match is a best-of-three, except for the Grand Final. In other esports, such as CS2, even Major Grand Finals are best-of-three series. But in Dota 2, the traditional format for this last match of the tournament is Bo5.

Stage 1 takes place between March 31 – April 4. Stage 2 takes place between April 5 – 10. And stage 3, between April 12 – 14.

As you know, the Elite League prize pool is $1,000,000 😧

But what you don’t know is that we decided to split it between ALL participants 😱

😗 The participating teams that didn’t pass to the next stage but finished second or third (depending on the region) will get $5 714! pic.twitter.com/FYPU059DBq

— FISSURE_ENG (@fissure_eng) March 9, 2024

Participants

Here are the 24 teams who will compete in Elite League:

• Team Spirit
• BetBoom Team
• Team Falcons
• Xtreme Gaming
• Gaimin Gladiators
• LGD Gaming
• Team Liquid
• Azure Ray

These are the teams who received the privilege of starting the competition in stage 2. The other 16 participants are listed below:

• OG
• Tundra Esports
• PSG Quest
• Aurora
• Team Secret
• Heroic
• Virtus.pro
• Entity
• Rest Farmers
• 9Pandas
• Blacklist International
• Talon Esports
• Nigma Galaxy
• Nouns
• KEV
• BOOM Esports

As you can see, this will be one of those rare events that features all of the former giants. Players like Puppey, KuroKy, and many others will get the opportunity to show Dota 2 fans what they can do.

In Puppey’s case, we’re talking about someone who is 34 years old. For esports, that’s not something we see every day. Most players retire much earlier.

Header: FISSURE, ESB