The IEM Global Challenge 2020 is confirmed, with the eight teams heading to Europe to compete in one of the 2020’s final events. The IEM Global Challenge 2020 will feature the four teams who earned their way to the event via recent tournament victories, with another four teams gaining their spot through the World Ranking system.
The first four teams to earn their spot through the events are Heroic, FURIA, Team Vitality and Chaos Esports Club. These four teams were successful at the DreamHack Open Fall, IEM New York NA, IEM Beijing-Haidian EU and NA events. While FURIA and Heroic were confirmed for months, Vitality and Chaos joust joined with the success at IEM Beijing over the weekend.
With the four teams confirmed, there were another four teams to earn direct invites through the ESL Pro Tour Rankings. Europe has two slots to the event, with Astralis and Complexity earning their tokens to the event. Over in North America, Evil Geniuses clinched their spot as they have had the next best run after FURIA Esports took the mantle over the last few months. Natus Vincere takes the final slot as they are the most dominant team in the CIS region.
What the Invited Teams means for the Event
The most interesting part of this is how Astralis and Complexity are the two European teams attending. With the recent Vitality victory at IEM Beijing, they secured themselves a spot. If they didn’t the competition of EU teams could have meant Vitality may have earned their invite through the EU top teams, while competing against the likes of BIG and Complexity for the spot.
On the other hand, the North American seeds are wild. With both Team Liquid and Evil Geniuses getting eliminated by Chaos E.C. and Triumph, it meant that one of NA’s T2 teams were going to a big event with intercontinental matchups. A typical final between EG and TL would have likely meant that both teams would have been invited, but the rise of Chaos has thrown a spanner in the works to really grow the success of the roster.
There was no question for Na’vi’s appearance at the event. If they won the EU Beijing event, they would have qualified via that route. But if they didn’t, then there was no doubt they would qualify through CIS. The only team close to them are VP and forZe, but both rosters are considerably far behind them in terms of quality.
With the amalgamation of teams at the event, the IEM Global Challenge 2020 is going to be an interesting event, with plenty of big teams competing against teams they normally never compete against. The IEM Global Challenge 2020 is set to start on December 15th to December 20th. The groups for the event are yet to be revealed.
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