Dota 2 and Counter-Strike: GO get major ESL tournament backing

Valve's Dota 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive will be the featured games of the Electronic Sports League’s new EMS One competition, with over $300,000 available in 2013 for Europe’s best gamers. This will be the most amount of money any gaming league has put up for these two titles thus far.

Dota 2 and CS:GO will each have four seasons with four live event finals over the course of the year. The top eight teams at the end of each season will meet at the offline season finals. The first event is being aimed for mid-April, with each game played on a separate weekend, EMS product manager Lari Syrota told GameSpot.

"The EMS One will feature an extensive online season with multiple matches throughout the week, contrary to consisting of a series of large-scale offline events," Syrota said. "We believe that this model will be more beneficial to CS:GO and Dota 2 because it facilitates the growth of these scenes."

ESL's largest tournament brand, the Intel Extreme Masters, currently features StarCraft II and League of Legends for its seventh season. This season was the first that Counter-Strike was not a featured title, and the Dota series has never been chosen before.

"Counter-Strike: GO and Dota 2 were obvious choices," Syrota said. "CS:GO has a strong heritage in eSports, with many of the star players from the old days as well as ambitious newcomers creating a very compelling competitive environment. Yet, it lacked a strong backbone so far, and this is where we come into play. Dota 2, on the other hand, is the successor of the MOBA pioneer, and its increasing popularity proves that it deserves attention from the world of eSports.”

Matches will be played and broadcasted online every week without breaks, with broadcasters Joe Miller and Paul "Redeye" Chaloner behind the microphone.

Details regarding the first teams invited, and how many weeks the season is, will be announced tomorrow on ESL's home page.