An event like ESL One Birmingham doesn’t happen overnight. It takes months of planning, conceptualizing, and a pinch of luck to bring it all together to create the event that took place last weekend.
Jaxon.gg spoke with Álvaro “Avo+” Sánchez Velasco, Dota 2 product manager at ESL FACEIT Group, who many Dota 2 fans will likely know from his years of hosting, commentating and talent work. In his current role, though, Avo+ oversees the events that thousands of fans visit in person, and tens of thousands watch from home.
We asked Avo+ whether he misses talent work, how much turmoil a mid-tournament Dota 2 patch causes for an organizer, and how the theming for the event came about.
Avo+ at The International 2023. Image credit: Valve
Starting off, especially at this event, you’re a man with many hats, many roles at tournaments these days. Just at ESL One Birmingham, I’ve seen you translating interviews, I’ve seen you just interacting with fans, you were introduced to me through email as the product manager for Dota 2 now at EFG.
Do you thrive on this chaos and having all these job titles and so much doing, or is there a part of you that just would prefer to just do some hosting and some interviewing and then be able to enjoy the Dota?
Álvaro “Avo+” Sánchez Velasco: “God, I miss, I miss talent work so much, obviously. I miss being the stage host, that was wonderful.
I wouldn’t say thriving in the chaos, but I feel like I’m always trying to do as much as humanly possible for the event to run in any capacity, right? From translations to, anything, I think, all jobs have a place, so I feel like whenever I can fill a hole, it gives me a lot of fulfilment.
It’s like, I found a use for myself here. So I would say I would do whatever is possible for the event to run as smoothly as possible. And that does give me a lot of satisfaction.”
On ESL One Birmingham, it’s now becoming quite a storied event. We’re on the fourth edition, we’ve had a lot of iconic moments in Dota happen here. Do you think something about these events, this location, that makes those things more likely to happen?
Avo+: “I think it’s the audience. I think it’s 100% the audience. I love this audience. I’ve lived in Southeast Asia and also have a lot of friends in South America. Those audiences are very high-tiered, you know? The Filipino audience is very well-known at ESL One Manila. The Peruvians are also insane. But I think Birmingham is up there with these kinds of, you know, top tier one fans.
You know, as much as we have tier one teams, we also have tier one audiences. And Birmingham is definitely there. I love how many memes come from the audience, you know, from the beach balls that we actually encouraged to do this year, the balloons, to the, you know, the chanting DHL. Like it’s fun. It feels like it’s a community event all over again.
All we can do is enhance it. But ultimately when you do live events, you can do your best and try your best, but it’s not like a show, right? You can’t script it all. You need all these, let’s say, actors to just ray that they do well.
Birmingham is wonderful in that sense. I think the players feel a lot more pressure than they do in other events because the audience is so intense. I think there’s a lot of feeling like, this is a land, this is what Dota was built upon. um And I honestly have nothing but positive words about everyone that comes to this event.”
One big thing about ESL One Birmingham is the drinking. And I appreciate that maybe you don’t want to talk too much about it, but how does that culture affect the planning? Like, for instance, I’ve seen you’ve modified the seating in the infield. There’s like, almost like, darts-style table seating in the infield. But how does that affect the production and the planning of an event like this?
Avo+: “Right, of course. I think it’s a fine line that you have to draw between people having fun, and of course, drinking is part of the fun here, and that’s not a problem, as long as you do it, of course, with moderation. So, we try to draw a fine line between, say, encouraging a level of drinking that is unhealthy and just allowing people to have fun, right?
And to a large degree, I think one of the things I’m very proud of this event is like the sipping tea that we see with Satanic, or other drinks. Well, that’s nice because it’s a way to showcase that it’s not really about someone downing a beer when we show them on camera. It’s more about the fact that everyone’s watching that person do an activity, right?
So it’s much more about the community aspect of it. And to us, the drinking tables, for example, the darts tables, as you call them, are part of that, right? Some people would like to have beer, but those tables are just a way to encourage everyone to hang out together, to make new friends, as opposed to saying that being a place where we have a bar right next to it, you can get the quickest beer possible, right?
So I think that is definitely our focus. And every year we get feedback on this topic, honestly, and we just try to improve based on the feedback that we get. So hopefully this year we did better than 2024 and people feel even more comfortable with the inclusion of that culture here because it is part of the culture.”
Image Credit: ESL FACEIT Group/Adela Sznajder
We’ve had two patches during the event now. How does that affect tournament planning or is it just something where you have to roll with a bunch of things?
Avo+: “Oh, that’s brutal. Patches are so brutal for us. I think people don’t get just how… I mean, obviously, from my experience, I’m just a Dota person, right? Patches are wonderful, you know? I’m the one person that comes in and is like, yeah, know, new patch. I’m just excited, right? Because I’m just excited about it. The only terrible part is I want to play it, right? So obviously I have to watch these guys play it.
But from a purely organizational perspective, it can be pretty difficult for us. We have in-game tools that we have to update. So that requires… I mean, the day the patch dropped, I was up until like 4-5 AM. Our in-game team was like up until… Honestly, I don’t know if they slept that day. Because they have to update everything. Our LEDs that are all based on the in-game API have to be updated. Our TM team has to do their best to try to mitigate the most egregious bugs that might be introduced in the patch. So there’s a lot of planning that goes out the window the moment that we get a patch.
It is very exciting from a viewer perspective in general and so as a fan I love it. But there are some difficulties here. That said, if Valve’s ever reads this interview: You’re welcome to drop patches. Drop six more patches! We’re good. Sleep is for the weak, right?”
From what I understand at ESL you guys had a little bit of a heads up on 7.41. Did you have any idea about 7.41a or was that just completely blindsided?
Avo+: “No, no warning. Did you hear the Slacks interview with Ame when he was asking him, ‘your hero’s just got nerfed! right now!’ That’s the heads up we got, you know?”
Wow!
Avo+: “Yeah, so we found out then. Luckily the letter patches are not as bad for us as the big patches that are the real rough part when it comes to organizational planning. Usually letter patches that don’t remove big parts of the game means it’s kind of smooth sailing. The big number patches are just really the death…”
This year the event has leaned heavily into British and Birmingham-specific theming. There’s a lot of Pudge with obviously his English accent. There’s Peaky Blinders costumes and hats everywhere. How does theming for an event like this come about? How does it get developed into a final idea?
Avo+: “I’m glad you asked that because I actually made a whole blog post about this.”
Oh yeah, I have been following those as well! The Before the Horn stuff has been fantastic.
Avo+: “I’m glad! For the theming is actually part that we consider a lot. We have a whole team, a committee from a bunch of different groups within ESL, all Dota fans of course. And we decide essentially always first on the mascot. That’s a long iterative process. And from then there’s kind of an expansion of the core theme of that mascot.
So in this case the idea was, okay, our mascot is Pudge. What does Pudge represent? And for our theme this time, the biggest part is Pudge is the most played hero in the history of Dota 2 and pub matches. I hate that. He’s my banned hero every single time. I only get him on my team. He misses all the hooks, but anyway…
He is a hero that, in my eyes at least, represents the community and to us that was the biggest idea. And the more we expanded upon the idea of community the more it was obvious to us that we cannot just say it’s the Dota community we also have to say it’s the Birmingham community, or the UK community as a whole. Especially because, like I said, we love this audience so much, so we felt that including parts of that culture into our event makes it so there’s a dual sort of meaning for the people that are coming from here.
Image Credit: ESL FACEIT Group/Jianhua Chen
They believe the event is more welcoming. They believe this event is part of their history. And people that are watching from abroad also get to experience a tidbit of that culture. And that’s something we always try to encourage.
I feel like, at least for me, the beauty of Dota being global, and honestly one of the few esports that has remained still quite global with six regions consistently. We want to really encourage that global aspect. We’re really looking forward to the meeting of communities. And I think the fact that yes, as someone goes to these many places, we use it as an opportunity to showcase, look, this city is really cool. This country is really cool.
And I also find it to be on a more personal level, a more organic way of engaging with places. You’re not just a tourist there. You happen to read about it more as you have a shared interest in Dota 2. That, to me, has always been one of the most wonderful parts of Dota.”
So I’ve heard at least from the Dreamhack side of things the event is already breaking records. uh With that in mind, can you see another event taking place either in Birmingham or elsewhere in the UK soon or will we have to wait another two years?
Avo+: “I can’t comment on the future events. I’m sorry. But obviously I will say that Birmingham is always in our hearts. I will never say never to a Birmingham event.”
Thank you so much for your time
While Avo didn’t confirm an ESL One Birmingham event for 2027, DreamHack has stated it will be returning to Birmingham in 2027, and during those same dates, ESL is planning to run its third Dota 2 tournament of the 2026/2027 season.
Stick with Jaxon.GG for more Dota 2 insights, coverage, and more.
Featured Image Credit: ESL FACEIT Group/Adela Sznajder
21+ and present in VA. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER.
