Sputnik Entertainment Archives's video: ULRICH SCHULZE INTERVIEW AT ESL ONE NYC

Hey guys, we had a chance to talk to Ulrich Schulze who is the Vice President of Pro Gaming at ESL/Turtle Entertainment at ESL One in NYC. Ulrich told us a little bit about himself, ESL, some of the upcoming events and the events that have happened earlier in the as well as his thoughts on what is coming up next for pro gaming in general. Connect with ESL: https://www.facebook.com/ESL https://www.twitter.com/ESL https://www.esl-one.com/ Sputnik Entertainment https://www.twitter.com/sputnikent https://www.sputnikent.com https://www.twitter.com/fallensputnik https://www.instagram.com/fallensputnik Dota 2 is a multiplayer online battle arena video game, the stand-alone sequel to the Defense of the Ancients (DotA) Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and The Frozen Throne mod. Developed by Valve Corporation, Dota 2 was released as a free-to-play title for Microsoft Windows, OS X, and Linux in July 2013, concluding a Windows-only public beta testing phase that began in 2011. Dota 2 is played in matches involving two teams of five players, each of which occupies a stronghold at a corner of the map. Each stronghold contains a building called the "Ancient", which the opposite team must destroy to win the match. Each player controls a character called a "Hero", and focuses on leveling up, collecting gold, acquiring items, and fighting against the other team to achieve victory. To ensure that enough DotA players would take up Dota 2 and showcase the game's capabilities, Valve sponsored sixteen accomplished DotA teams to compete at The International, a Dota 2 specific tournament, for a one million dollar prize in 2011.The International became an annual championship tournament, with the venue changing to Seattle, Washington, United States.] In 2012, the tournament was hosted during PAX Prime, with Chinese team Invictus Gaming going on to defeat the defending champions, Natus Vincere. In its third year, The International had a prize pool of over $2.8 million, thus reclaiming its previous title as having the largest prize pool in electronic sports history from League of Legends (at the Season 2 World Championship).The 2013 championship was won by the Swedish team Alliance, whose prize exceeded $1.4 million USD. The fourth iteration of The International took place at KeyArena in Seattle between July 18 and 21, 2014, with the Chinese team NewBee becoming the new champions. Due to the funds raised by interactive compendium sales, the overall prize pool was elevated to over $10.9 million, the largest in the history of electronic sports. In 2015, the Dota 2 Asian Championships were held in China with a final prize pool of over US$3 million being raised through compendium sales. The North American Dota 2 squad Evil Geniuses emerged winners, beating Chinese squad Vici Gaming 3-0 in the grand finals. Later that year, Evil Geniuses also won US$6.6 million out of a then record US$18 million prize pool as The International 2015 champions, defeating Chinese squad CDEC Gaming 3-1. The Electronic Sports League (ESL, formerly ESPL) is an eSports league, which is operated by Turtle Entertainment in Cologne. In 1997, today's CEO, Ralf Reichert, founded the Deutsche Clanliga (DeCL) with partners. It was renamed in 2000, making it the oldest league of its kind in the world. Today it has more than 5,000,000 registered members and consists of over 1,000,000 teams, which have played over 22.5 million games[6] in addition to leagues and tournaments and VERSUS, the ESL's own matchmaking. The ESL supports over 50 games in different genres, where the best players in various national and international leagues can play for prize money. Games are broadcast on ESL TV, the IPTV station of the ESL, or played publicly on conventions such as Gamescom or CeBIT. The ESL ESEA Pro League (also known as EEPL) is a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive league hosted by ESEA League - a provider of alternative matchmaking services and their own league - and ESL. There a two divisions, a North American one and a European one, with each division containing 12 teams. During the season, weekly matches are held on ESEA's servers in double-round-robin format, where each team plays every team twice in a best-of-one series. The top four teams of each division qualify for the LAN finals, which can be held at either ESL's Los Angeles, or German studio. The ESL One marquee is used for a variety of purposes. Historically, it was used to refer to an association of international pro leagues, in which participants compete in games that the EPS does not support. However, in recent times, ESL has used it to refer to offline tournaments ran by itself in a variety of games, such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive or Dota 2. ESL One tournaments were usually considered to be below the Internal Extreme Masters set of tournaments, but as of late both marquees carry equal significance.