From the Press Release
Evil Geniuses, the western world’s premier professional gaming team, and Razer, one of the world’s pioneering supporters of eSports and a world leader in connected devices and software for gamers, made history today celebrating Evil Geniuses’ Dota 2 team, which placed third at The International 2014.
Evil Geniuses’ finish earned the team just over $1 million, a record for a U.S.-based team. The crowd-sourced prize pool for the entire tournament topped $10 million, easily a record amount for professional gaming tournaments.
The International 2013 held the previous overall eSports prize pool record at $2.8 million.
Evil Geniuses’ five-man team from America – Peter “ppd” Dager, Mason "Mason" Venne, Saahil “UNiVeRsE” Arora, Artour “Arteezy” Babaev and Ludwig “zai” Wahlberg –used Razer’s award-winning gaming mice, keyboards and mouse mats to achieve victory.
“The tournament featured the very best Dota 2 players in the world, and it took an incredible amount of practice and teamwork for us to finish the way we did,” says Dager, who serves as team captain. “Dota 2 is won and lost in fractions of a second. It came down to us being one of the most prepared and most skilled teams there.”
The finals were held at the KeyArena in Seattle. The venue has hosted a Beatles concert, an NBA All-Star game and other headline events. The International 2014 sold out its 10,000 tickets for the KeyArena in one hour in April.
“We’ve been sponsoring some of the world’s most talented and successful video game teams – like Evil Geniuses – since the inception of eSports,” says Min-Liang Tan, Razer co-founder and CEO. “We hope this amazing event is a sign of things to come for professional gaming and Dota 2, and we intend to be a major part of that growth moving forward.”
Razer sponsors hundreds of competitive gamers from around the world. The company has been supporting eSports from its most formative years.
To learn more, visit the official Razer website.