Casa Noturna has been crowned the UK’s best student Valorant team at the Red Bull Campus Clutch UK Grand Final.
The UK champions defeated Last Dance in a tense 2-0 Grand Final at the Red Bull Gaming Sphere in London yesterday, and in turn, qualified for the Red Bull Campus Clutch World Finals in Brazil this December.
Casa Noturna will now battle for €20,000 in prize money as well as an exclusive VIP experience at a 2023 Valorant Champions Tour event.
In the South Final, Last Dance took a commanding 2-0 win against Just Essentials to book their place in the Finals, with dominating victories across Haven and Bind to seal it in just two maps. The North Final between Casa Noturna and Birmingham Bulls was also tense as the two evenly matched teams fought for momentum. Casa Noturna eventually booked their place in the Grand Final with a 2-1 victory, with the team pulling off a stunning comeback on the third map from 8-1 down to win 10-13.
The Grand Final kicked off on Ascent, where Casa Noturna won the early advantage with a 13-5 win, setting up a tense second map on Pearl. Last Dance fought back to take an early lead at 6-1 and looking to take the match all the way, but Casa Noturna dug in with an epic comeback to win the match 13-8.
Reflecting on their road to victory, Casa Noturna’s Ben ‘Benzki’ Price, said: “We had a really tough run today, Birmingham Bulls were hard opponents and Last Dance were difficult too, but we kept composed and used our experience.
“I think we’ve got a really good team here, all the guys played their part really well, even if they were in roles they wouldn’t normally play on. They kept their cool under pressure and I think that was the main reason we were able to win this afternoon.”
Ben ‘Benzki’ Price, Casa Noturna
The Finals were streamed live on The Goose House Twitch channel, hosted by Matt ‘Twiggy’ Twigg and Vicki ‘Gottmoxi’ Johnson.
Following the event, Gottmoxi said: “I think they have a really good chance of winning the whole tournament in December – they showed today that they can adapt really well on each map, they have a brilliant agent pool and they were able to pull out all the stops and turn things in their favour whenever they needed to which is a brilliant attribute to have as a team which will be incredibly valuable in the World Finals.”
Red Bull Campus Clutch kicked off this August, with National Express on board as a partner, and National Qualifiers and National Finals taking place across the globe.
So far, this year’s tournament has had over 4,500 teams taking part, with 25,000 participants and over 300 national events. Soon only 50 teams will remain, all travelling directly to Sao Paulo, Brazil for the in-person LAN final.
In the UK, over 400 players in 81 teams had battled across regional qualifying rounds to reach the UK Final, with four qualifying winners earning a place at the Red Bull Gaming Sphere in London for the LAN Finals.
The Red Bull Campus Clutch World Final will take place between December 13th and 16th 2022, with the final stages being streamed live on Red Bull Twitch. Taking place at Estádio do Pacaembu, famously used for several games of the 1950 World Cup, 50 teams will kick off the tournament, in the initial group stage matches taking place from December 13th-14th. From there, the teams remaining will battle it out in an elimination format, with the Grand Final taking place on December 16th.
In a separate Red Bull tournament, 2v2 CSGO Red Bull Flick, this saw Finnish amateur duo KUUSAMO.gg, made up of Alex ‘Puteli’ Koivanen & Juho ‘8Juho8’ Kankaanpää, crowned this year’s champions in an epic finale against fellow rookies swiiiry. Filmed in front of a live audience in the heart of the Danish capital, the 2022 Red Bull Flick Invitational Copenhagen was brought to fans by an all-star cast of CSGO royalty in Frankie Ward, James Bardolph, Jacob ‘Pimp’ Winneche, and Lucy ‘LucyLuce’ Eastwood narrating the action for fans at home.
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.
