UK-based esports organisation Excel Esports have won the first Valorant Regional League for teams in the UK, Ireland and Nordics.
They defeated Tenstar 3-2 in overtime this evening to secure their victory in Polaris Stage 1. Not only did Excel win in overtime, but they won against the odds – Tenstar had a default first-game win due to their upper bracket run, before winning game two 13-5 on Bind. Excel then won three games in a row to pull off the reverse sweep.
In doing so, they have also progressed to the Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) promotion tournament, representing the Northern Europe region.
There, they will go up against the best teams from other Valorant Regional Leagues (like Evolution from the DACH Regional League), as well as the relegation sides from VCT EMEA Stage 1 Challengers (BIG and SuperMassive Blaze).
The top two teams in this promotion tournament will then reach EMEA Stage 2 Challengers.
Excel will be delighted with tonight’s result, especially given their ride in Valorant esports so far has been a little bumpy. They haven’t played consistently in Challengers or reached the LANs they would’ve liked to, and have changed their roster a few times, most recently when Excel announced their 2022 Valorant roster two months ago.
But it certainly looks like those changes are paying off now – paTiTek (Poland), elllement (Serbia), ozzy (UK), Moe40 (UK) and chiwawa (Russia) showed good spirit and resilience to win this tournament. Moe, in particular, pulled off some incredible clutch plays this evening.
PaTiTek said on the broadcast after the win: “I’m speechless, my hands are all shaking, I don’t even know what to say! We choked so hard, but then at the end, they choked even harder.
“Doma [Tenstar player], as I said, we’re gonna f*** you – and we did. End of story.”
Excel finished second in Polaris’ regular season, behind Alliance, with Tenstar and Tundra in third and fourth place respectively.
Tenstar had initially beaten Excel 2-1 in the first round of the playoffs, but Excel made a strong lower bracket run, defeating Alliance and Tundra 2-1 before facing Tenstar in tonight’s grand final.
Teams outside the playoffs spots in Polaris were Kova, London Esports, who cars? and H2O, in order from fifth to eighth.
Polaris and other Valorant Regional Leagues were first announced in December 2021. The Polaris tournament for Northern Europe is run by UK-based esports solutions provider Promod Esports.
While it was disappointment for Tenstar tonight, their Tenstar Nova women’s team recently won Birds of Prey Episode 3.
We’ll leave you with a selection of tweets and reaction from Excel’s win this evening:
Excel also celebrated in League of Legends lately, when they qualified for the LEC playoffs for the first time in their history.
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.
