Epic Esports Events General Manager: “There is little chance of [Dota Major 2]} being played online”

Mark Averbukh, general manager of the tournament operator Epic Esports Events on the Esheriff telegram channel, shared his thoughts on the possible date of the announcement of the first Major tournament of the 2021/2022 season, the possible location of the championship and whether the event will take place offline at all.

According to Mark's assumptions, the announcement of the event should take place in January:

The first Major of 2022 should take place between February 17 and 27, which means that it should be announced by the end of January.

Averbukh believes that the key criterion for selecting a country in which to host the first Major tournament will be the ability of participants to enter the country without a visa:

The nuance in the form of a new strain of the virus and a short period of time for issuing visas (which cannot yet be processed, since the host country is unknown) suggest that the tournament may take place in a country where some part of the participants will be able to enter without visas.

According to Mark Averbukh's assumptions, Valve does not exclude the possibility of holding the championship in an online format. In this case, he named several options that the organizers of the tournament will probably look closely at, based on the circumstances:

I admit that there is a small chance of holding the tournament online, on European servers, and participants from other 4 regions will come to countries where they do not need/have a simplified visa, there is a good connection to, for example, Stockholm and there is no strong difference in time zones.

For example, for the inhabitants of China it can be Azerbaijan, and for the United States, practically any of the European countries. In general, as absurd as it may sound, the online Major provides enough options in order to reduce the number of visas required for issuing.

The first Dota 2 Major championship in the 2021/2022 season will be held in February. Valve has not yet announced the exact date of the event and the tournament operator who will organize it. Yaroslav 'NS' Kuznetsov, referring to his sources, said that the tournament operator, with whom Valve initially intended to cooperate, refused to host the championship. Now the creators of Dota 2 have to quickly find a solution to get out of the situation.