Well, the DotA Major (A tri-yearly major tournament with a current prize pool of 3 million dollars) which is happening this Winter in Shanghai, China, has been the most unparalleled disaster in the history of E-Sports, for too many reasons to list.
It all began when many employees of Valve petitioned to have infamous caster James Harding, or "2GD", to be on the talking panel, despite the problems Valve has had with him before. IceFrog himself rallied to have him as part of the team, with a screenshot of a conversation in which he asked 2GD to simply "be himself". For those who don't know anything about James (I didn't), he's essentially a shock comedian and professional provocateur. This of course made him perfect for the likes of Reddit and especially the Twitch TV crowd, not so much for professional E-Sports.
After beginning a broadcast with the word "c***", insulting and belittling players in the tournament, including the term "bottom b*tch" (to be fair, the players in question were his friends and reportedly didn't mind), and discussing the wheelchair midget pornography he masturbated to in his Chinese hotel, he was promptly fired from his position by Gabe Newell himself.
Gabe then made a public declaration on Reddit, openly regretting his decision to hire James, and calling him an unprofessional ass in just as many words. As you can imagine, this caused an internet sh*tstorm, and has really set the tone for the kind of behavior which may be considered acceptable, from both employees and employers, in the future of the ever-growing world of E-sports.
Unfortunately, the problems for the tournament were just beginning...
Since then we've had stream delays of several hours. Best of three series that lasted for 6 hours. Players getting cheap equipment to play their games on. Players getting stuck on elevators or prevented from leaving. Events that took so long (due to the massive production delays), that the audience was forced to leave the auditorium before even half of the day's games were played. Gamer booths in which the casters can still be heard. A glue smell within the gamer booths which is disgusting, potentially hazardous, and has caused some players health problems which have delayed the games on multiple occasions.
Hot dogs of dubious quality being sold for $7 a piece (outrageous concession prices). To make matters worse, as an audience member (or player) you aren't allowed to bring nourishment or LEAVE the event and return, so you're forced to buy the crappy and overpriced food and water over a period of ~12 hours if you don't want to starve. Game casters under fire of attack helicopters or being possessed by Satan mid-cast.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. It really has been an unprecedented disaster and I recommend that you read this PC Gamer article for a glimpse of everything that's gone wrong (and continues to go wrong).
http://www.pcgamer.com/the-comedy-and-tragedy-of-the-dota-2-shanghai-major/
