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Being able to advertise that top Dota 2 teams like OG, Team Secret, and Vici Gaming are attending your tournament is something that will guarantee at least some form of viewership. But that only works if the organizations agree to compete.
The tournament organizers behind the upcoming Hainan Master Invitational released a full breakdown of what fans could expect from the Chinese tournament on Weibo this morning, which included a list of teams that would be attending. But of the nine teams that are shown in the promotional images, it appears that representatives of the BOMI Esports Culture Media Co. didn’t actually contact anyone.
BOMI Esports, which has hosted several Dota tournaments in the past, like the recent Hainan Master Cup, released all of this information along with the full tournament details. But the operations manager for Secret, Matthew “Cyborgmatt” Bailey, was quick to point out the falsities in the TO’s claims.
“This is fake news,” Cyborgmatt said. “Majority if not all of the teams on this list have not even been approached yet by this TO. Team Secret will not be attending this event.”
Secret weren’t the only team to debunk BOMI’s announcement, either. OG, PSG.LGD, and Virtus Pro have also confirmed that they haven’t been contacted by the TOs and have no information in regard to the event, according to VP Esports and Cybersport. Official statements from some of the teams are expected to be released later today.
Dan “Pluto” Shatrov, a representative from UCC, the studio that will run the qualifiers for this Invitational, said that the translation was done poorly. The TOs didn’t announce the list of invited teams, but rather “they announced that they would like to invite them,” but have yet to actually do so, according to Pluto.
But even so, Pluto agrees that the teams are completely in the right for shutting down when he was talking about the event with Maincast co-founder Vitalii “v1lat” Volochai. The Russian commentator pointed out that even if this was done as a way to show who the organizer wanted to invite, using their logos and accolades on promotional material wasn’t right.
Even with all of the confusion, the Hainan Master Invitational is set to take place from March 3 to 8, which directly overlaps with the next Dota Pro Circuit Minor on March 5. That instantly takes priority, which means the event will likely only be able to invite teams that are knocked out during the Major qualifiers, which puts the teams on the original list as a pipe dream for the tournament organizer.
