The Malaysian contingent may have not survived past the first round at The International Dota 2 Championship 2015, but that didn’t stop local fans of the game from tuning into to the rest of the matches. Astro counted almost 1.5 million viewers over the course of the tournament; and now the League of Legend community wants equal treatment.
Astro decided to broadcast TI5 this year after a petition from local fans to screen the main event on local television. It looks like the move paid off, with fans tuning to to matches despite the massive time difference that lead to games starting at 1am local time. The availability of a local broadcast also helped with organising large gatherings of fans – called pub stomps – to watch the matches together; cumulating in a massive six hall pub stomp at TGV 1 Utama.
Dota 2 is not the only game of its genre with a massive eSports following. League of Legends, a similar game, is often considered to be the more successful of the two; at least where the number of active players is concerned. It also has a robust professional circuit that ends with a massive international tournament held in South Korea.
A petition has arose to ask Astro to also broadcast the League of Legends Season 5 World Championship. It has gained over a thousand signatures over the last two days, and the fans have adopted a similar approach used by Dota 2 enthusiasts to get their game broadcasted.
Considering the success of TI5, Astro may seriously consider adding another eSport to it collection. The time difference between Malaysia and South Korea is substantially smaller than between that of Malaysian and the middle of the USA; which could possibly lead to many more viewers.
[Source: DNA]
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