Team Spirit take home a record $18m prize after beating PSG.LGD in the final of the biggest Dota 2 tournament
Team Spirit defeated PSG.LGD in the Dota 2 Grand Final of the jubilee International 10 (2021). The meeting ended 3-2. The Russian team earned over $18.2 million for the victory.
TSpirit took an early 2-0 lead, but the Chinese team managed to get back into the game by taking the next two maps. The winner was decided in the decisive fifth game, where PSG.LGD were beaten by a score of 29-12.
Both squads made it through to the play-offs from Group B. Spirit lost to Invictus Gaming in the first round of the Winners. In the lower seeding, Yaroslav “Miposhka” Naydenov’s team defeated Fnatic, OG, Virtus.pro, IG and Team Secret. On the way to the decisive match LGD defeated T1, VP and Secret.
Team Spirit squad: Yatoro, TorontoTokyo, Collapse, Mira, Miposhka, Silent (coach).
PSG.LGD: Ame, NothingToSay, Faith_bian, XinQ, y, xiao8 (coach).
Miposhka, the captain, spoke emotionally after the game:
“All thanks to our manager – korb3n. He put this team together, invited me to an already strong pack. All thanks to hard, hard work. Before The International 10 we had a bootcamp – the hardest one of my career. I don’t know, it just happened. Thanks to all the fans who supported us even before the tournament started. Many wrote to me and wished us luck, saying they believed in the team. Thank you all.”
“I don’t know, I don’t know what to say at all. I guess we’ll think about the future later. I don’t know what we’re going to do next. Maybe someone will even end their career – you can’t be sure here. We won such a big sum of money – do we even need to play Dota after that [smiles]?”
– he said talking about the future.
Ayrat “Silent” Gaziev’s men earned $3.5m each for their victory from a total prize pool of $40m.
Prize fund distribution:
| 1st place | Team Spirit – $18,208,300 |
| 2nd place | PSG.LGD – $5,202,400 |
| 3rd place | Team Secret – $3,601,600 |
| 4th place | Invictus Gaming – $2,401,100 |
| 5th-6th place | Virtus.pro and Vici Gaming – $1,400,600 each |
| 7th-8th place | OG and T1 – $1,000,500 each |
| 9th-12th place | Fnatic, Quincy Crew, Alliance and Evil Geniuses – $800,400 each |
| 13th-16th place | beastcoast, Team Undying, Team Aster and Elephant – $600,300 each |
| 17th-18th place | Thunder Predator and SG e-sports – $100k each |
All winners of The International:
- 2011 – NAVI
- 2012 – Invictus Gaming
- 2013 – Alliance
- 2014 – Newbee
- 2015 – Evil Geniuses
- 2016 – Wings Gaming
- 2017 – Team Liquid
- 2018 – OG
- 2019 – OG
- 2021 – Team Spirit
The International 10 took place from 7 to 17 October in Bucharest, Romania. The prize pool has become the largest in the history of cybersports competitions. Also, the maximum online viewership for all broadcasts of The International 2021 Grand Final with Spirit and PSG.LGD exceeded the 2.7 million viewers mark.
- The International is held annually; in 2020, the tournament was canceled due to a coronavirus pandemic. In 2021, the tournament was moved from Stockholm to Bucharest and held without spectators.