Gareth ‘Gareth’ Bateson is an experienced UK Dota 2 caster, who worked at his first major ESL event this past weekend – ESL One Birmingham 2024. Dom Sacco caught up with him to discuss his background working at events like Epic.LAN and more.
Hi Gareth, congrats on working on your first major ESL event!
Thanks – I’ve done a bunch of other events and a lot of ESL B-streams. Since 2015 when I started casting as a full-time job, I was on the ESL B-streams for the most part. I was meant to come to some ESL events but Covid happened and that shuttered things.
It’s been honestly amazing to have my first ESL event in the UK in Birmingham, and to have this crowd as well. The English crowds are up there!
They are. And ESL has tapped into the culture well with the Brewmaster theme and the camera cutting to people in the audience chugging beers. Do you live near here?
I’m based in Berlin now, I’m originally from Bradford up North. I’ve lived outside of the UK for half of my life, my parents were teachers and we moved around to different countries a lot.
In 2015 I got a job offer from Freak4U’s JoinDota, one of the original Dota website portals, so I moved over there and started casting full-time. So I started doing the ESL B-streams and all the MLG stuff, we had the JoinDota league back then as well.
Prior to that, it was a hobby. I had a full-time job working in a warehouse, asking, ‘hey, I need Friday and Monday off because I’m popping over to Kettering to do Epic.LAN!’
“It’s been honestly amazing to have my first ESL event in the UK in Birmingham, and to have this crowd as well. The English crowds are up there! I was almost crying from being happy, looking down on the crowd, like, this is my ESL event, the pinnacle of my career.”
Gareth Bateson
We’re doing an article on the history of UK and Ireland Dota 2 at the moment. Yesterday ESL’s Shane Clarke spoke to me about organising the old IreLAN events. Liquipedia says you worked at a DotaTalk LAN event at the Trocadero in London back in the day. Do you have any memories of early UK Dota?
If I can remember correctly, CS caster Machine and I both worked at Epic 12, and that was our first foray, our first stepping stone from grassroots to a small/medium event, then we went on to do bigger things with ESL and PGL and other big tournament organisers.
I’m an Epic.LAN winner [as a player] as well! There were like six teams at this tournament, so I went from caster to LAN winner to caster on the big stages.
It’s sad seeing them and Insomnia dropping Dota. I remember i49 where they had a decent amount of Dota teams, about 34 teams.
We did have a Dota 2 ESL Premiership Skirmish tournament a few years ago but nothing really regular. Why do you think we don’t have grassroots Dota in the UK?
I’m not sure, it might be a volume thing, League has 10x the player base especially in English-speaking countries.
I think Dota players can also be a bit picky in terms of what they’re watching, they like watching pro level play. Grassroots is maybe not something everyone can get into. There are communities out there playing online or on Discords with remote stacks. The biscuit network, Teamspeaks etc.
It might be because some people don’t get along with each other, back in my day there was a little toxicity problem (laughs). Talking to people who I fell out with five or six years ago, we’re all reformed, we’ve all grown up! Chatting with people, it was like, ‘I was a dickhead back then, sorry!’
Some esports personalities choose to be known by their real name instead of a gamertag. Why did you decide to use your real name, Gareth?
I did have a gamertag before, and I changed it. It was originally a word from South Park that became politically incorrect, I had a few nasty DMs. Looking back on it now, it was a dumb name.
I was one of the first to use my real name, now a lot of people are putting [first name]casts as their name!
Gamertags are still fun, as long as you have something that ages well. You think back to some of the old cringe CS names like XXXSniperWolf!
You’ve worked at some Dota 2 TI (The International) events in the past, right?
I did a TI group stage in Bucharest, which unfortunately didn’t have a crowd, and then one main event series, then the TI after that, I did the group stage as well.
That’s the event you strive towards as a caster. Funnily enough for me, I got to do a TI event before an ESL main event, so when I got up here onto the caster desk, I was welling up. The emotions hit me and I was almost crying from being happy, looking down on the crowd, like, this is my ESL event, the pinnacle of my career.
I’ve done a lot of the last steps before ESL One. A lot of people do the stepping stones, the ESL then TI, but I’ve done TI and have been waiting to do an ESL event for almost ten years now!
“If I can remember correctly, Machine and I both worked at Epic 12, and that was our first foray into casting. I’m an Epic.LAN winner [as a player] as well! There were like six teams at this tournament, so I went from caster to LAN winner to caster on the big stages. It’s sad seeing them and Insomnia dropping Dota. I remember i49 where they had a decent amount of Dota teams, about 20 teams.”
Gareth Bateson
What are your thoughts on the future and the Esports World Cup?
The landscape is always changing, it’s kind of scary to think about the future and what happens next year.
This year we lost the DPC (Dota Pro Circuit), which was a very solid three seasons per year. This year we’re a lot more reliant on getting a LAN event gig for work.
We had Riyadh Masters the past couple of years and now the branding has shifted to the Esports World Cup. I did the first Riyadh event which was incredible because the prize pool was massive. It was competing with TI but TI was still the top good.
But now, with the battle pass and crowdfunding change with TI, the prize pool has shrunk a bit. The $40m pool was good for headlines and showing off, but for stability and having the scene continue, it’s not ideal to have one event that’s 99% of the prize pool for the year. You want that spread out across multiple events and titles, they have millions spread across 19 games at the World Cup, which is pretty cool to have them all together.
Do you think Valve will change the crowdfunded system or battle pass for TI this year, to push its prize pool up from around $3m it had last year to higher this year?
It’s possible. They went away from the battle pass – they released a Crown Fall update recently which has a handful of chapters in it. We are seeing cosmetics being released and money going back into the game, in that first chapter, but I don’t think we’ll have the same thing where a battle pass dictates the prize pool of a tournament.
The livelihood and tournaments will come more from the developer and sponsor, which is way more sustainable than relying on the whales spending tens of millions on level 50,000 battle pass!
To end then Gareth, a sillier question: what’s your favourite Nandos order? And your favourite British meal, or something you miss when you’re abroad?
It’s probably bad to be seeing this as a Brit, but I’ve only been to Nandos three times. I go for the chicken thighs, spiciest level, and coleslaw on the chips.
And, I live in Berlin, and they have really good pastries and meat there. But for some reason, with the centuries of history Germany has, they’ve not figured out how to make a meat pie. So when I come back to the UK, I go to Greggs and get a steak bake, and that hits the spot!
As we have the Brewmaster theme here at ESL One Birmingham, what’s your drink of choice?
I don’t drink that much nowadays, but I think dark and stormy is what I go for, the rum and ginger beer.
Related article: ‘I hope ESL One Birmingham happens every year and gets Greggs as a sponsor’ – ODPixel Interview
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
