ESL One Birmingham 2020’s Dota 2 qualifiers are vying for a bigger prize pool from the original US$300,000 to US$350,000 over four regions- Europe and CIS; North and South America; China; and Southeast Asia.
The coronavirus pandemic has forced global events, including esports’ ESL One Birmingham 2020, to either change its logistical plans or cancel. As the global health crisis continues to challenge every system in the world, the organisers have decided to transform their prestigious esports events such as ESL One Los Angeles and ESL One Birmingham into an online tournament.
Through the years, SAP has been a partner of ESL in providing tailor-made analyses of the live broadcasted events. After supporting the successful ESL One Los Angeles Online that ended in April 2020, once again, SAP has been tapped to be the official analytics partner for the ESL One Birmingham Online 2020 to provide an intensified overall viewing experience for Dota 2 fans.
Stephan Schröder, SVP Global Brand Partnerships at ESL shared in a release:
“We are excited to be expanding on our partnership with SAP. Together, and with the continuous development of these new technologies, we will make the next steps towards professionalizing esports even more.”
Originally planned on 29- 31 May at Arena Birmingham, ESL One Birmingham 2020 will continue on as an online tournament to be played and broadcasted with regional online leagues from May to June. The total prize money of US$350,000 will be spread across the four regions like Europe and CIS with a US$200,000 prize pool; North and South America with US$40,000; China with US$50,000; and Southeast Asia with US$40,000. China and Southeast Asia are considered as individual regions.
Milan Cerny, Director of Strategic Partnerships at SAP, stated:
“It is great to continuously work with ESL on improving and enhancing the live stream when it comes to interesting statistical insights.”
“Together, we have digested the feedback we received from our previous collaborations and developed new types of overlays and graphics in order to make each game even more exciting and interesting to fans,” Cerny added.
One with esports
SAP has been a reliable advocate and supporter of esports. Back in October 2018, SAP has made data analytics accessible and appealing to the tournaments’ spectators as it debuted the live broadcast of the ESL One in Hamburg, considered the most important Dota competition in Europe. The tournament was held in the Barclaycard Arena with 12 competing teams fighting for the prize pot of US$300,000.
In 2018, SAP has entered into a three-year sponsorship with Team Liquid wherein they co-developed a software based on in-game data leveraging the SAP HANA business data platform to help Team Liquid analyse performance and achieve greater precision in areas like the team and player performance and scouting new talent. SAP Cloud Platform, the SAP Leonardo digital innovation system, IoT, and predictive and machine learning functionalities have been part of the innovation process then.
SAP has also been the analytics partner providing additional insights into the pick & ban phase of both Kuala Lumpur and Disneyland Paris Dota 2.
Though the global tournament will be experienced online this year, organisers have announced that the event ESL One Birmingham 2020 powered by Intel will be rescheduled sometime in 2021. For those who have already purchased tickets for the 2020 Dota2 event that was supposed to be hosted for the third time in Birmingham, their tickets remain valid until 2021.
