Over the past few years of CSGO’s boom, Dreamhack and ESL have hosted all of the major titles sponsored by Valve. MLG has been given the chance to host the first American CSGO major.
A Valve sponsored event means funding, a $250,000 prize pool, sticker sales, and the best teams and talent within competitive CSGO. Giving this opportunity to MLG shows Valve trusts them to host a world class event. Last year, MLG hosted the winter X-games CSGO tournament that was praised for its high-quality production.
Adam Apicella, MLG’s Executive Vice President, had this to say in the press release, “For our first CS:GO event we brought the competition to the Aspen X Games. We wanted to bring the game back to North American fans in a big way, and hosting a Major in front of thousands of spectators at Nationwide Arena is an exciting way to do that.”
The event will take place March 29th-April 3rd. The group stages and quarterfinals will be held at MLG Arena and then move on to Nationwide Arena, home to Columbus’ NHL team, the Blue Jackets. A total of 16 teams from around the world will be invited to attend.
American teams – Cloud 9 have been up and down over the last 6 months. For a while, everyone in the world thought they could continually challenge the best teams, but this doesn’t seem to be the case anymore, as they couldn’t make it out of groups in the last 2 majors. They are now being challenged as the best North American team by Team Liquid’s new and improved lineup with Hiko.
European teams – At the same time Europe, is not slowing down. Team EnVyUs just won the last major and look better than ever, TSM is hot right now, Fnatic are ready to make another run to the top, NiP are playing loose, and you can never count out VP, G2, Navi. Who knows what will unfold over the next few months before this major. The combination MLG running the major and the teams competing in it will certainly put on a show on American turf.
Published: Nov 20, 2015 03:12 pm