Sold Out! The International 5 tickets gone in minutes

The International 5 tickets went on sale through Ticketmaster at 10 am PDT, and were completely sold out in less than six minutes. A second batch of tickets then went on sale at 10 pm PDT, only to vanish within minutes yet again. Last year, tickets for TI4 were sold out in less than an hour.

Valve press: "The first round of tickets for TI Dota 2 Championships went on sale at 10am Pacific this morning and were sold out by 10:06am"

— Matthew Bailey (@Cyborgmatt) March 27, 2015

TI5 is being held August 3rd through 8th at the Key Arena in Seattle, Washington, the same venue as last year. The Key Arena has a total seating capacity of over 17,000, however the number of tickets that have been released for sale has not been announced. Each buyer was only allowed to purchase a total of five tickets per household. Tickets were $99 plus approximately another $27 in taxes and service fees, totaling $126 per ticket. Free contributor badges were announced shortly after the first wave of tickets was released. Details on any VIP tickets have not been disclosed at this time.

Troubles with The International 5 tickets

Fans have taken to Reddit and social media to complain and vent frustrations with their experience and the issues trying to purchase tickets. It seems that there were multiple errors, loading problems, system crashes and overall glitches. Tickets have already started to circulate on Ebay and other listings for prices ranging from $400 to $1000, with much speculation that many of the tickets were actually purchased by bots and scalpers.

As Valve allows for a 48-hour return and refund window for The International 5 tickets, fans who check back regularly within that time-frame may get lucky and score some tickets. In the future, with the growth of the Dota 2 community, some alternate ticket sale methods and larger seating capacity venues should be considered.

The International 5

The prize pool for The International 5 has not been disclosed yet, but is expected to sit on a $1.6 million base. TI4 broke the record for the largest eSports prize in history, with a final total prize pool of $10,939,698. The initial prize pool was $1,600,000, with $2.50 of every TI4 Compendium sold and 25% of any purchased points added to the pool. The total amount funded by the crowd was an additional $9,330,698.