OpTic Gaming team captain and former CEO of Evil Geniuses Peter “ppd” Dager is setting up a North American semi-professional league for Dota 2 players. Having worked professionally as a player, team owner, and personality, Dager now hopes to grow the NA Dota 2 scene into “a better place” for fans, players, and investors.

“I saw this opportunity to create a semi-professional scene, as something that was missing that I think is absolutely necessary,” Dager told The Esports Observer. “Dota 2 has been surviving without it, but I think this could be a very good addition to just making it a better place.”

One of the main issues with the North American Dota 2 landscape, according to Dager, is a lack of “opportunities for semi-professional players.” He continues that the FPL circuit’s—a main point of entry for Dota 2 semi-pro players—upper prize of pool of a “couple thousand dollars a month” only rewards a tiny portion of participants.

“I don’t think that in-house leagues are a successful or a viable option for the Dota 2 scene,” he says. “Because I personally believe that rank matchmaking is a much more comprehensive in-house league in of itself.”

He went on to describe how his own experiences of matchmaking in America led to playing with only the top 500 participants in the region, many of whom he got to know through repeated games. As such, Dager considered players he matched with in the area to be “essentially an in-house league” in of themselves.

“There’s no other real avenues for tier two players to go to,” he continued. “You sign up for the Dota 2 pro qualifiers—minor, major, whatever—and all these qualifiers, at least last year, were in the exact same week, with three or four stacked on top of each other.”

“As a semi-professional player you probably had to choose which tournaments you wanted to play in, because you were forced to play in the open qualifiers for each and every one.” He explains how, after losing a match, a semi-pro player can have almost three and a half weeks to wait until the next qualifier begins.

“There would be no other places to be seen to go and compete,” Dager continues. “Also, under the system they weren’t making any money.”

According to the press release, the prize pool at the North American Dota Challengers League will be distributed in such a way as to allow even the last place team to earn income for competing.

With no central league, Dota 2 is a different beast to games such as League of Legends. As such, there arguably isn’t much incentive for a player feeder system at different tiers, presenting plentiful barriers to entry for budding Dota 2 pros.

“Unless you’re living with your parents, you’re not making any money off of Dota 2,” says Dager. “I just wanted to make it easier for players to aspire to be professionals.”

Thehe difficulty in making a living off the esport as a semi-pro has led to stagnation in Dota 2’s overall growth. “Each year we have like one or two new players,” says Dager. Long-term, he is also hoping his work with the Challengers League will lead to an expansion of Dota 2 as an esport.

“All I want is for Dota 2 to grow in popularity as a game an esport, by expanding the professional and competitive scene,” Dager says. “I think that would bring a lot of eyes to the North American scene. I don’t see why it can’t be a viable entertainment option for lots of viewers, and as a result I think that we will collect some sponsors. The more sponsors we get, the more funding we receive, the more opportunities we’ll be able to create for people to make money.”

“That’s what we’re trying to do here: flush some money into the lower tiers. I hope my name and my reputation will play a big part in helping the validity of the league, and hopefully players will respond well to that.”

The initial North American Dota Challengers League season is due to start in October immediately following the first Valve minor qualifier, although not “too much is set in stone just yet”.

“The idea is to announce early, then just gather feedback from everybody once they have some time to think about it,” says Dager, regarding the initial announcement. “We’re still working out figuring out what we want it to look like, and how best to design it for players and teams.”

The league will continue throughout the year while avoiding any conflicting dates with the DPC qualifiers.

“I want there to be more Dota 2 teams,” Dager concluded. “I want there to be more people looking at competitive Dota 2 not only as something they want to do, but they something they want to watch.”