Once The International ends, no region or Dota 2 roster is safe from the post-TI shuffle that takes place. That almost always means teams that finish poorly at TI or miss out on the event entirely will be changing at least one aspect of their lineup, and for BetBoom it looks like that is taking the form of something entirely new.
Just days after the event, Russian betting organization BetBoom announced it would be parting ways with the Dota 2 roster it signed back in April.
BetBoom entered the Dota Pro Circuit this year as a sponsor for various events out of Eastern Europe and as a competitor of sorts with the signing of SoNNeikO’s former Winstrike Team lineup as a sort of title sponsor that isn’t really seen often for non-organization stacks. They would go on to see instant success, entering the Stockholm Major as the top Dota 2 team out of EEU and finishing in seventh place.
That success in the DPC would slow down as the season went on, but BetBoom would go on to defeat Virtus.pro and claim an invite to TI11—where they would eventually bomb out alongside TSM in a tie for 19th place.
Related: TSM is making changes to its Dota 2 roster in big NA shuffle
Now, the once-underdog BetBoom team is back on the free-agent market as the post-TI11 roster shuffle begins picking up steam. But it appears the collaboration ended on good terms, at least according to team manager Luka “Lukawa” Nasuashvili.
“At the beginning, it was not clear whether such an approach would be better or worse than the classic organization. But from the very first days we saw how absolutely everyone in BetBoom is not indifferent to Dota, the community and [team],” Lukawa said.
“We have come a long way together and in such a short period of time we have become true friends that we will continue to be.”
Now, BetBoom has decisions to make with its own roster now that the team is back to being just a stack. But they do hold one very valuable piece that could make a new org or sponsor take interest.
While BetBoom likely still has plans to act as a sponsor within the Dota space, as they did for TI11 on certain productions, SoNNeikO still holds the team’s Division I slot for the upcoming 2022-2023 DPC season. This means whoever is still sitting on the roster alongside him in the coming months will not have to fight through open qualifiers or Division II in order to compete for a spot at the first Major of the year.
Based on their performance in the latter half of the season, fans can likely expect at least one player to be swapped out if another org doesn’t negotiate a deal to bring a handful of the players in and use that spot to their advantage.
We will have to wait; the next two months will be full of negotiations across regions.
