This TI's format was atrocious. The International use to start and complete in one week. This year it took them 18 days and 3 different venues. All the excitement and momentum was sucked out of the event.
Tickets for the event went from around $150 to $800, and you had to buy those tickets so far in advance that 60% of the teams were already knocked out before you even got to see any of the teams play in the arena. And fun events like the All Star/Show match got cut.
The compendium was a $7.49 donation and you got nothing in return for it. The prize pool dropped -92.5% from 2021. You had other tournaments during the year that dwarfed TI in prize pool money. You kill the casual's interest in the game, the money dries up, and the pro's will find another game to devote their time to.
All of this is self-inflicted and terrible decisions. By 2016 or so they had really fine tuned almost all aspects of the event. Now, they made the decision and said, "We figured out E-Sport format perfection, so let's not do any of that anymore."
WTF??? This is peak malpractice or abject laziness. Gaben must be so far removed that even he doesn't care enough anymore to hold anyone responsible.
The Dota death-spiral started in 2023.