- ESforce Holding’s tournament organization arm will host the last Dota 2 Major of the season.
- The event will take place in Moscow in June and feature a $1M USD prize pool, which is partly supported by Dota 2 publisher Valve.
- ESforce Holding’s ownership of Virtus.pro could represent a potential conflict of interest for the event.
Epic Esports Events 
, an affiliate of Russian esports conglomerate ESforce Holding , will host the fifth and final Dota 2 Pro Circuit Major of the 2018-19 season – the EPICENTER Major. The final stage of the competition will take place in Moscow from June 22-30, with the last days of the tournament taking place at the 28,000-seat SCKA Arena. Like all DPC Majors, the EPICENTER Major will feature a $1M prize pool.
The Dota 2 Pro Circuit is Valve’s season-long tournament circuit which feeds into The International – Dota’s biggest annual event. Different locations and organizers are selected to host the Majors each year. Earlier this month, the fourth Major of the season was awarded to Chinese organizer Mars Media, which will host the event in partnership with Disneyland Paris.
Epic Esports Events has hosted multiple tournaments under the EPICENTER brand, including a Counter-Strike event last October, which also held its finals at the CSKA Arena.
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ESforce’s ownership of the EPICENTER brand could represent a potential conflict of interest for the Major. The holding company also owns esports organization Virtus.pro , one of the top Dota 2 teams in the world. If Virtus.pro qualifies for the EPICENTER Major, ESforce would have a stake in both the tournament organizer and one of the teams competing for the million-dollar prize pool.
This would not be the first potential conflict for ESforce. Virtus.pro’s Counter-Strike team competed in the event last year. The company also previously owned stakes in SK Gaming , and held the advertising sales and media rights to Natus Vincere. The holdings company cut ties with all but one of its organizations in order to participate in both Valve and World Esports Association (WESA)-sanctioned events. ESforce also counts broadcasting, analytics, and production studio RuHub and Russian-language news site Cybersport.ru within its portfolio.
Similar conflicts exist with another company in the Valve-related esports ecosystem – RFRSH Entertainment . The company operates the Counter-Strike tournament brand BLAST Pro Series, as well as one of the teams eligible to participate in said tournaments, Astralis . Like ESforce, RFRSH also previously owned multiple teams but the WESA ruled that only one of its teams could participate in BLAST Pro Series events at a time, and the company eventually scaled down to a single Counter-Strike organization. Recently, RFRSH signed a sponsorship deal with OMEN by HP which includes both Astralis and the BLAST Pro Series, as well as its newly-acquired League of Legends team Origen .
