The 2019 CSGO Esports Championship Series (ECS) will culminate in a grand finals event hosted at London’s Wembley SSE Arena again this summer.
FaceIT’s ECS Season 7 finals will take place from June 6th to 9th, with two groups of four teams battling it out. The top four teams from this will then enter a knockout bracket to determine the overall champion.
Prior to the finals, a new format is replacing the traditional round-robin season.
Teams in each region (EU and NA) will instead compete in five eight-team BO3 knockout brackets to qualify for the finals. Each of these tournaments will have $25,000 up for grabs.
“We have worked extremely hard to determine a format and match timings that suit the players, the community and that help the CSGO ecosystem.”
Michele Attisani, FaceIT
Matches kick off on March 11th and will run until May 9th.
The winners of the first three series will qualify automatically for the ECS Season 7 Finals. The remaining two slots will be given to the top earning team from each region in prize pool across the whole regular season. Teams already qualified will not be counted.
ECS Season 7 features a $750,000 prize pool overall, split into $250,000 for the regular season and $500,000 for the finals.
There will be 20+ teams taking part, including the below and others coming through the open qualifiers (which run from February 16th to 28th) and the Challenger Cup. There’s more info on the format on the ECS website.
The 8 EU teams currently in the tournament are:
- Astralis
- Faze
- Fnatic
- LDLC
- Mousesports
- Ninjas in Pyjamas
- North
- Optic
NA teams so far include the following:
- Complexity
- Cloud9
- Eunited
- MIBR
- NRG
- Renegades
- Rogue
- Team Liquid
Weekend tickets currently cost £25 for general admission, £50 for premium (including better seats, a lanyard and an ‘exclusive piece of ECS swag’) or £12.50 for students, plus booking fees.
ECS is using wave pricing for the event, which means ticket prices will rise closer to the event.
“We have worked extremely hard to determine a format and match timings that suit the players, the community and that help the CSGO ecosystem,” said FaceIT co-founder and chief business officer (CBO) Michele Attisani.
“It’s vital that players can perform at their highest level without burning out and it’s fantastic that as an industry we recognise the benefit in working together towards a long term goal. At the same time, we’re excited about what the new format means for fans- every game will matter.”
FaceIT held the London Major at the SSE Arena last year, the UK’s first CSGO Major.
A few days back, GGBet held a separate CSGO event in London.
You can check out an ECS Season 7 open qualifier trailer below:
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
