Dota 2 has been and will continue to be a celebration of esports. As one of the most successful tournament series it has become a beacon for other tournaments. With excellent gameplay, an enormous prize pool, and fantastic production. These are the pillars of ESL, and especially Dota 2.

This most recent tournament sees Dota come back to Birmingham. After 5 long years they are finally bring Doat 2 back to England. NA Dota 2 has been taking a slide for several years now, so bringing one of the largest tournament back to England.

This tournament has an astonishing prize pool. 1,000,000 USD. This is one of the largest prize pools in ESL History, and is further impressed because the community raised a portion of the money.

For major tournaments Dota sells an in game bundle. This includes skins for characters the community votes for, and weapon skins/animation changes. A portion of the funds then goes to the overall tournament prize pool.

This involves the community and get them exited for the tournament. As well as adding skins that are for community favorite characters. This year was no exception, as the first place for the tournament was slotted to take home $300,000 USD.

The tournament managed to amass an honestly impressive number of watch time. Combining all matches ESL One Birmingham had 11.6 million hours watched. That’s roughly 1,324 years of watch time. That’s just a testament to how many viewers this years tournament had.

This is also an improvement from last years major. ESL One Kuala Lumpur 2023 has an impressive 8.1 million hours watched. This is nothing to scoff at, but this years ESL one major was able to top them.

This was a 44% increase in watch hours. One of the biggest jumps in esports viewership history. Regardless this is an impressive growth in watch time.

_{Credit: Esports Charts}

ESL One Birmingham also did great in viewership numbers. This year the tournament had peak viewership of 327,225 thousand viewers. This was during grand finals match between BB vs Falcons, that ended in the Falcons securing there third victory.

This is constant with the viewership of past ESL One tournaments. This years tournament was third in all-time views for the series. This is especially impressive due to the decrease in viewership in esports.

We have talked about several times on this channel, but the esports winter has had an especially hard impact on ESL and Dota 2. Looking at this chart from Esports Chart we can see the viewership has different peeks and lows, so matching the viewership has extra meaning.