That said, one major topic that has been troubling the community is the support of the Tier 2 Dota Competitive Scene, and it wasn’t addressed directly in the 2019/2020 season announcement. This is a controversial topic in itself, so it’s not surprising at all Valve hasn’t taken an obvious stance, but it is something that might turn out to be important for the longevity and freshness of the competitive scene as a whole. This is increasingly important, as more and more people prefer watching Dota to playing it.

It’s a worthwhile topic to keep track of in 2020. In my humble opinion, the key metric to watch out for would be if the 2020 DPC and TI are increasingly dominated by the same top teams.

It gets boring quite quickly to play in the same meta with the same heroes in every single game. In a similar way, it would get old very fast if the same top 3-4 teams are fighting each other at the finals of every single DPC event. Yet, this is likely to happen if the T2 scene is struggling, because the gap between T1 and T2 will simply grow larger and larger.

Human beings are attracted to stories, and the underdog stories are arguably the most valuable in spectator sports. If they become increasingly rare, viewership will start dwindling. Even if there is currently 0 viewership interest in the T2 scene itself (which is not a situation that can’t change), I believe it is something that Valve should try to nurture nonetheless as a (minor) long term investment.

That said, I don’t expect them to announce anything new on this topic at least until after TI10.