DreamLeague Season 23 starts today, and it’s important for a few reasons. For some teams it’s the last way to earn EPT points to qualify for the Riyadh Masters (5 spots locked, 3 still are up for grabs!), for some it’s the last chance to earn a direct invite to The International; and for others it’s the last opportunity to test your roster’s resolve as we head into TI season.
TI Season you say, aren’t you a bit early? Well The International is happening (entirely?) in September, and probably will take ~2 to 2.5 weeks. Riyadh Masters / Esports World Cup is from the 4th to 21st July. This means that there’s probably a gap of ~6-6.5 weeks between the end of Riyadh and the start of TI, too short of a time to run qualifiers and expect teams to get visas for Denmark. To me this suggests that TI qualifiers will be in the middle of June.
If the regionals are before Riyadh, then either conditional invites will be made (which I think is unlikely – it’d be weird that a team that has potentially eliminated teams in Regional Qualifiers will be somehow dragged into TI even if they didn’t qualify themselves); or the invites will be based on prior results. Which brings us back to now, DreamLeague 23 - the last Tier 1 event that matters.
So how will The International operate? We know very little:
there will be 16 invites in total
every region will get at least one invite (this probably means the classic 6 regions, with MENA being part of WEU)
Valve have said they care about performance during the year
Valve have said that they care about events which are cross-regional, have qualifiers for multiple regions, etc.
There’s still a lot of ways it could be determined, but I would imagine that we are looking at 4 to 7 direct invites. Top 6 performance in Tier 1 events matters the most; and general skill & tier 2 results are just nifty tiebreakers for closer cases.
12 unique teams have placed top 6 in a tier 1 event. Based on these prior results I would think that Team Falcons, BetBoom Team, and Xtreme Gaming have clearly done enough in terms of prestigious results to secure a TI invite — they’ve appeared in 2+ finals. Falcons particularly has been the benchmark team this season.
The next batch is (in no particular order) Team Liquid, Azure Ray, Team Spirit, and Gaimin Gladiators. They’ve all appeared in a single tier 1 final this season, however Spirit and Azure Ray have won one each (Azure Ray’s the first event of the season, and Spirit the most recently finished one).
Although this batch will probably shuffle (or possibly have a new addition), I think we could consider average skill ratings throughout 2024 as a data point. This makes sense to me because some teams might have had better draws than others, or had a great set of results against good teams but fallen short in the playoffs.
This suggests that the current ranking for the batch should be:
Team Liquid (most consistent top results with 5 top 6 placements in 6 events, great avg ratings)
Team Spirit (an 16 team event win, high avg rankings)
Azure Ray (AR won the first event of the year, and came 3rd in Elite League)
Gaimin have been been more consistent in the year and (higher rated so this is very close)
Could any teams do well in DreamLeague S23 to join them? I think Tundra is the only team which could make a great argument along these lines. 3rd place at ESL Birmingham and a 1st in DL23 might be enough to jump into contention. In my eyes, doing well in a single 12-team tournament should not be grounds for a TI invite, so this excludes a few of the unmentioned teams. Quest did have a 5-6th place finish at Elite League which is borderline but not enough in my eyes.
What other DreamLeague S23 results are important? Gaimin Gladiators, Azure Ray, and Team Liquid could possible lock it in with a top result (or jump over the others!). No Team Spirit in attendance!
What about the final invite slots? As I said before, it’s likely that there are 4-7 direct invites. With one guaranteed invite per regional qualifier, that means there are 3-6 outstanding slots. There’s too many permutations for me to iterate over, so I’ll just do the case of 7 direct invites with the current 7 explained teams (and hence 3 extra regional slots)
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb2e2a801-76ab-4e0d-bd95-67bf8229e8a9_708x301.png)
Purple is the top regional team by rating. Note that LGD might still be on a break (??). Overall it’s clear that:
WEU has the most skill depth, so they’d definitely get an extra slot.
EEU seems to drop off quite quickly after a single slot, so I think 1 is the cap
SEA has two teams which are in the critical range
China might have one team which is in the critical range
SA/NA have one team each which are in the critical range
Overall these are what I consider the 5 most viable options (no particular order). If I had to pick, I’d definitely take option #5. It allows those final two slots to be contested right until the end, it brings back a bit of that cross-regional magic from the early TIs, and it means that even if enigmatic statsmen are wrong in their evaluation that the system can correct itself!
Anyways, these are my feelings on the matter. Please don’t get angry with me if I said that your favourite team isn’t a contender, or your region only should get one slot!
Regards, Noxville.