“What’s on this week?” is ESI’s weekly feature letting you know just what’s going on in the wonderful world of esports in the next seven days. Each week, ESI picks a selection of events and provides a brief overview of what’s going down, where it’s taking place and how you can watch it.
First up we head to Paris, with Dota 2 heading to the house of Micky for another Major and huge prize pool. Then, we travel to Vietnam for the League of Legends Mid Season Invitational 2019, with the top teams from Europe, Korea, China, North America, Taiwan and Vietnam. Final we head to America for the first WoW LAN event of the year as the 2019 AWC Spring Finals get underway.
MDL Disneyland Paris Major
Dota 2 action returns to us this week and as of publishing, we’re well underway in the upper bracket first round with Evil Geniuses having just dispatched Team Liquid and Vici Gaming v NiP just starting. The winner will follow Team Secret and OG in round two, whilst the losers will drop to the lower bracket round two with PSG.LGC, Complexity, Virtus.Pro and Mineski. The other remaining LB R2 sides will be decided when Chaos EC take on paiN Gaming and Keen Gaming take on Fnatic.
All lower and upper bracket series will be played on Bo3 over the next 6 days, with the Grand Finals being played in a Bo5. This Dota 2 Major, like so many others, also comes with a giant $1m (£760,000) prize-pool and 15,000 Pro Circuit Points. The event will be played on patch 7.21d.
Stream: MDLDisney – Location: Disney Arena, France – Date: 7/5 – 12/5 – Sponsors: AMD, SAP, AOC Gaming, HyperX, Secretlab, Sennheiser, CORSAIR – Organiser: Mars Media, Disneyland Paris Event Group – Prize pool: $1m (£760,000)
2019 Mid-Season Invitational – Main Event Group Stage
This week will see the start of the League of Legends MSI Main Event. With Play-Ins wrapping up at the time of publishing we have our full list of regional super teams for the next two-weeks of LoL esports action. The three teams who enter the event with direct seeding are G2 Esports, Invictus Gaming and SK Telecom T1. They will be joined by Play-In sides Flash Wolves, Team Liquid and
The group stage, which gets underway on May 10th will feature Bo1, double round robin, with the top four sides advancing to the Knockout Stage and the bottom two going home. Once teams advance to the Knockout Stage, games will change to Bo5 with the Group Stage winner picking its opponent from either of the sides who finish third or fourth. All matches will be played on patch 9.8, with teams fighting for their share of the $250,000 (£190,00) base prize pool.
*Final prize pool will include sales of multiple in-game items within League of Legends.
Stream: Riot Games – Location: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam – Date: 10/5 – 14/5 – Sponsors: MasterCard, Alienware, Secretlab – Organiser: Riot Games – Prize pool: $250,000* (£190,000)
World of Warcraft Arena World Championship – Spring Finals
Blizzard promised a big year for WoW esports in 2019, with AWC and MDI events running throughout the year across multiple regions. This weekend marks the first LAN event of the year as the top four sides from NA & EU come together to do battle for their share of the $100,000 (£76,000) prize pool.
From the EU, Method Black, Wildcard Gaming, Change My Mind and ABC will be joined by the NA hopefuls, The Boys, Method Orange, Never Lucky and the recently acquired Super Frogs roster which will now play under Cloud9. Games will be played live at the Blizzard WoW Arena in Ohio, USA. All matches will be played in a Bo5 format.
Stream: Warcraft – Location: Ohio, USA – Date: 11/5 – 12/5 – Sponsors: – Organiser: Blizzard – Prize pool: $100,000 (£76,000)
That’s a wrap on this week’s picks, be sure to check back next week for another edition of the ESI weekly picks.
We want to feature at least one smaller event each week on the ESI weekly picks. If you want an event included in a future edition, send an email to david@esportsinsider.com.
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