The finals of Esports Championship Series’ fourth season kicks off next week, and it’ll mark the conclusion of the CS:GO calendar year.
To end a fantastic year of Counter-Strike, FACEIT is hosting its eight team, $750,000 event at the Hard Rock Hotel in Cancun, Mexico. The top four teams from both the European and North American regions will go head-to-head in a relaxed offline setting free from distractions. Fnatic, FaZe Clan, Mousesports, and Astralis will be representing Europe, while Cloud9, OpTic Gaming, Team Liquid, and Luminosity will represent North America.
Related: Teams finalized for ECS season four finals—defending champion SK Gaming to miss out
The groups for the opening stage were determined based on their placing in the regular season. Teams one and three from each region were paired with teams two and four of the latter region, putting them into a four-team group. The teams and their respective groups are listed below, with their proper seedings, which were based on their placing in the regular ECS season.
Group A
- Fnatic (EU One)
- OpTic Gaming (NA Two)
- Mousesports (EU Three)
- Luminosity Gaming (NA Four)
Group B
- Cloud9 (NA One)
- FaZe Clan (EU Two)
- Team Liquid (NA Three)
- Astralis (EU Four)
The Group Stage
Within each group, teams will play from Dec. 15 to 16 in a standard GSL-style format with two initial games, a winners’ match, a losers’ match, and a decider match to decide which four of the eight attending teams will go on to the playoff stage. Those matches will begin at 10:15am ET on Dec. 15 and continue the following day.
Group B is arguably the group of death, as all four contenders in the group have almost equal chances of making it to the group stage. Group A will likely go in favor of OpTic and Fnatic, however, because of their top performances at the recent ESL Pro League Finals.
The defending ECS Season 3 champion SK Gaming won’t be in attendance, so the main storyline heading into the event is whether FaZe can continue to end the year on a dominant note. Hungry teams such as Cloud9, Liquid, Fnatic, and OpTic will be looking to dethrone them from the top of Counter-Strike, while underdogs like Mousesports and Luminosity Gaming will be looking to make some noise at the international level. Astralis is looking like an outlier to the team list, as they are looking to end the year with a good result, despite having Ruben “RUBINO” Villarroel as their stand-in for Nicolai “dev1ce” Reedtz, who is on medical leave.
The Playoff Stage
On Dec. 17, the final four teams will compete in a single-elimination, best-of-three bracket for the last title of the year. The semifinal matches will be held at 9:15am ET and 12:15am ET, and the grand final will play out shortly after at 3:15pm ET. From there, the champion of the three month-long league will be crowned.
Competition at the ECS Season Four Finals can be viewed on FACEIT’s Twitch channel.
