Dota 2 is where the money is in eSports right now, but The International isn’t the only big prize pot championship going down this summer. The ESL is hosting a Dota 2 tournament next month with a six figure prize pool of its own: competitors at the ESL One taking place in Frankfurt on June 28-29 will split a huge prize now standing at over $194,000, and they’ll be doing battle in a venue truly befitting such an epic spectacle: a World Cup class football stadium.

ESL One Frankfurt 2014 is being hosted in Germany’s massive Commerzbank-Arena, and while it won’t set any winnings records now that the TI4 pool stands above $6m, it may very possibly become the largest live Dota 2 spectator event in history, with capacity for more than 51,000. With big name teams including Cloud 9 and Invictus Gaming already qualified, and only one space left up for grabs, we spoke to ESL One product manager James Lampkin about what to look forward to at the event.

Tell us about the beginnings of ESL One. Where did the idea for a global Dota 2 tournament like this come from? ESL is a world leader in eSports events and we all very impressed by the incredible growth that Dota 2 has seen over the last couple of years. Because it is such an open ecosystem, it’s a bit like the wild west – tons of organizers, teams, and players figuring their way around, discovering what works and what doesn’t.

We looked at the ecosystem and decided we didn’t want to add another online league with a ton of games, but try to do something bigger. That was the birth of ESL One Frankfurt.

Hosting in a football stadium is quite unusual. What challenges does it present? It’s a massive undertaking. I’ve worked on projects like WCS and Blizzcon, but having total control on a massive venue and project requires a ton of extra work to make things work smoothly. Ultimately we want to create the best event possible for both the people coming to the stadium and those watching at home.

Tell us something nobody knows yet about what we’re going to see there? We want to make this event a European themed version of The International, and we’ll be bringing along many of the extras. We’ll be inviting some of the best item creators in the Dota community for live demos of their creative process as well as meet and greets with fans. We’ll have multiple secret shops on site and fans will be able to get a hold of both team jerseys and exclusive Dota swag.

For the final eight teams, two are being invited while the others must qualify. Is that fair? Will it make for great viewing? It’s an interesting balance that we constantly debate. The core of it comes down to creating a great value proposition for attendees – do you want to attend an event where maybe you don’t care about the teams playing? ESL has a deep-rooted history of open systems, so we incorporated this with global qualifiers on top of our direct invites of Navi and Alliance.

We think this hit a pretty good balance on fairness and guaranteeing that fans can meet all of the star players they’d like.

Commerzbank-Arena © Ting Chen Wing

We’ve seen some huge upsets in the ESL One qualifiers. Did these surprise you? And do you think the teams we’ve got so far will make for an interesting tournament? We are pretty excited about the attendees. One of the nice things about Dota is that so many of the top teams are able to beat each other regularly. There are a few usual contenders, but especially in the Asian scene there’s 8 to 10 teams that are constantly vying for the top spot. Having iG get one of the spots to attend ESL One Frankfurt is a huge win, as we’ll have all three winners of the previous years’ International tournaments.

Tell us about the planning that goes into an event like ESL One. When does it start, and how many people are involved? We started work on ESL One late last year with talks with the venue, and then many months of planning. Everything from logistics to tournament structure, from marketing to our broadcast production requires a ton of expertise and smart decision making – it’s certainly a full time job and then some. Our core team is about 10 people, but as we get closer to the event, more departments and members of ESL join the team. Onsite we expect to be over 130 staff.

Presumably infrastructure for something on this scale is tough as well. Can you give us some numbers? ESL One Frankfurt will feature a main viewing screen over 400 square meters (4096 square feet) in size. This is the biggest screen that fans will have ever been able to watch eSports on and is a massive accomplishment for all of us as fans and organizers. There are multiple viewing screens around the venue, but this main screen will be viewable from wherever fans are sitting.

It’s really an awesome moment for all of us working on the event, especially when you consider that even just a few years ago just a few hundred fans were gathering to watch events on far smaller screen and in much smaller venues. It’s really a testament to the growth eSports is seeing, and to have ESL at the forefront of that is exciting.

Tickets for ESL One Frankfurt 2014 are on sale now .