Two Philippine squads will be flying the country’s flag high in the ONE Esports Dota 2 SEA League with the tournament starting on June 18.
TNC Predator and Team Adroit are the two Philippine squads who got a direct invite from ONE Esports alongside teams like Boom Esports, Fnatic, Geek Fam, Reality Rift, and T1.
These seven squads will be joined by three other teams who will have to earn their slot through the qualifiers.
The first set of online qualifiers will take place from 4-5 June, with the top two squads getting the eighth and ninth slot in the tournament. Another set of online qualifiers will take place on 6 June for the 10th and final spot in the tournament.
The qualifiers are open to all teams in the Southeast Asia server, which includes Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Korea. Interested teams can sign up here until 5 June.
A 16-day season will take place starting 18 June and the teams will play each other in a round-robin format with the two bottom-feeders getting booted out of the tournament.
Action then resumes on 15 July for the double-elimination playoffs with teams playing in a best-of-three playoff format. The Grand Finals takes place on 19 July with the two remaining squads competing in a best-of-five format for the bulk of the US$100,000 prize pool.
The champions will go home US$40,000 richer while the runners-up take US$20,000. The third-place team gets US$15,000 as the fourth placer scores US$7,000.
Those who missed out on the semi-finals will not go home empty handed; the fifth and sixth place teams take US$4,000 each, the seventh and eighth placed teams will take US$3,000, while the cellar-dwellers will settle for US$2,000.