Saudi Esports Federation is organizing a gaming and Esports summit, which will commence on July 14 and will run for eight weeks with a generous total prize pool of 15 million dollars spread across multiple game titles.
The whole event runs under the Gamers8 tag and is brought by a number of Saudi Esports Federation’s partners, including the Savvy Gaming Group, a subsidiary of the Saudi Arabian government’s Public Investment Fund.
Dota 2 is one of the games that will be featured at Gamers8, with the tournament for this game title offering a $4,000,000 prize pool. The competition is scheduled to unfold July 20-24 in Riyadh, the capital city of Saudi Arabia, on the “Esports & Elite Zone Boulevard.”
Given the hefty prize pool, this Dota 2 tournament set to begin next week is the second biggest competition in the professional scene. Yet, the organizers don’t seem to be in any rush of promoting it or even releasing basic public information.
Riyadh Masters 2022 - The great unknown
Attending teams
Except for a series of Twitter posts made this past Tuesday, July 12, regarding a few of the teams invited, everything else about this event is basically impossible to be found via official channels.
Allegedly, there will be a total of 10 teams competing, however, the teams announced so far via Twitter are just four and it just happens that these are the top 3 teams at TI10 (Team Spirit, PSG.LGD and Team Secret), plus the new OG roster, recent ESL One Stockholm Major champions.
Gamers Without Borders, an online charity event held by the same Gamers8 in May this year, also acted as a qualifier for the Riyadh Masters 2022, so the winner of each GWB regional is supposedly expected to play now for a share of the 4M dollars tournament.
Team Liquid won back in May the EU and CIS regional, Royal Never Give Up took the spoils in the Chinese region and Deboosters are the Saudi Arabia Gamers Without Borders 2022 regional winners. Of these three teams, only Deboosters were confirmed so far by Gamers8 to attend the Riyadh Masters 2022.
Additionally, Tundra Esports’ support player, Martin "Saksa" Sazdov mentioned during a winner’s interview in the Dota Pro Circuit Tour 3 that his team will be heading next week to an event in Saudi Arabia.
Tournament format & prize pool distribution
There is no official information about the tournament format nor how the 4 million dollars will be split among the teams. The word on the street is that the 10 attending teams will be divided into two groups of five and some will advance to the playoffs. How many exactly will get eliminated in the group stage is a mystery as well, just like the group stage format and the number of games played per series. The same applies to the playoffs. It’s also unknown if there will be a live audience for the whole tournament, just the playoffs or just the finals.
On the Gamers8 official website there is a ticket sale, but only for the opening ceremony of the entire 8-week festival. The organizers do, however, ensure the fans that ‘each tournament promises to be an unforgettable experience for the whole Esports community” and let us know that “more details are coming soon.”
Hopefully in the one-week span left until the Dota 2 Riyadh Masters 2022 is set to begin, we do find out more about what is set to be the second biggest tournament of the year, after The International, in terms of prize pool money.
