The Road to Boston Starts in Atlanta
ELEAGUE, the esports tournament and content brand from Turner and IMG, has kicked off three weeks of exciting Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) action. It’s all part of the ELEAGUE Major: Boston 2018. Though the final stage of this major tournament will be held in Beantown the first two stages are being held in Atlanta. The action started yesterday with the New Challengers stage. Next week Atlanta will also host the New Legends Stage. When the top competitors arrive in Boston at the end of January it will be for the final New Champions stage.
New Challengers Stage
This stage functions as an offline qualifier and will run from January 12th-15th at the ELEAGUE arena in Atlanta. The qualifier will pit the bottom eight teams from the last major against the top two minor champions from each region. Team Liquid and Misfits will represent the Americas Minor, Renegades and Flash Gaming will represent Asia Minor, Avangar and Quantum Bellator Fire from CIS Minor, and Space Soldiers and Team Envyus will round out the new challengers coming from Europe Minor. These teams will face the lower eight from the last major; Cloud9, Flipid3 Tactics, G2 Esports, Natus Vincere, Mousesports, FaZe Clan, Vega Squadron, and Sprout. The top eight teams will advance.
New Legends Stage
Functioning as the group stage the New Legends stage will also take place at the ELEAGUE arena. This stage will run from January 19th-22nd and pit the top eight teams from the New Challengers stage against the returning top eight from the last Major. These top eight teams are; Gambit Gaming, Astralis, Fnatic, SK Gaming, BIG, North, 100 Thieves, and Virtus.Pro. Astralis, Gambit Gaming, Fnatic, SK Gaming, and Virtus.Pro have all won previous Majors with Gambit Gaming Having won the last major. As in New Challengers, only the top eight teams will advance.
New Champions stage
The final stage of the major will be in the Agganis Arena in Boston. The contest will run from January 16th-28th ending with the grand finals on the 28th. The top eight teams from the New Legends stage will face off in a bracket for the Major Championship title and $500,000 prize. These top eight teams will also receive ‘Legend’ status translating to an invite to the next major.
In a press release Craig Barry, Chief Content Officer with Turner Sports said “We’re looking forward to hosting our second ELEAGUE Major in back-to-back years and bringing a CS:GO championship to Boston for the first time,”. The stage is set and so far the competition has been fierce. If you like Counter-Strike, then next few weeks are going to be good. You can catch all the action live on Twitch and YouTube as well as the ELEAGUE.com official site.
