FACEIT announces $3.5million league

6-4-2016 15:00

FACEIT and Twitch have partnered up to host a new global league called the Esports Championship Series (ECS), which will pay out $3.5 million over the course of two seasons.

Kicking off on April 9, the Esports Championship Series will have a European and a North American division, both featuring ten teams, eight invited and two qualified.

The most interesting aspect about the ECS is that it offers co-ownership to the competing teams, who will get seats on the board as well as a share of the tournament's revenue.

ECS will be co-owned by FACEIT and the teams

The top teams from these two divisions will duke it out at an offline event, the details of which are as-yet unannounced. The league will put a total of $3.5 million on the line - a figure that includes financial team support and will be spread out over two seasons.

"Players and teams are the heart of the esports community and deserve the opportunity to reap the rewards of their hard work and dedication to grow esports into a mainstream phenomenon," said FACEIT co-founder Michele Attisani.

"We make the community our first priority and as such, we’re excited to support the first esports league that positions teams as co-owners."

The announcement of the Esports Championship Series comes six months after the end of the third iteration of the FACEIT League, which came to a close at DreamHack Winter. fnatic were crowned champions at the event in Jönköping after beating Luminosity 2-1 in the grand final.

At the start of the year, FACEIT co-hosted the ELEAGUE Road to Vegas, an event that served as a prelude to the $1.2 milion-a-season league that will be organised by Turner and WME | IMG.

The qualifiers for the Esports Championship Series will run from April 6-8 in Europe and North America. In both regions, four invited sides will square off in a best-of-two round robin group stage for two spots in the best-of-five semi-finals, in which they will take on two seeded sides. The winners of these matches will secure berths in ECS.

Below you can find a list with the teams competing in the ECS qualifiers:

Round Robin
Europe	North America
AGG	Winterfox
HellRaisers	Echo Fox
SK	Obey.Alliance
Gambit	KKona
Semi-finals (Invites)
Europe	North America
MOUZ	Selfless
G2	Splyce

ty based faceit

2016-04-06 15:03

42 replies

so probably faze got invited whereas mouse has to qualify...i dont get it why faze gets invited to each and everything, they are so bad atm

2016-04-06 15:26

37 replies

but fAzE tho

7 replies

2016-04-06 15:27

6 replies

Ez4ence

2016-04-06 15:37

4 replies

ez 4 lg

2016-04-06 15:41

3 replies

ez hellrisers ;)

2016-04-06 15:46

2 replies

No gambit > hr Dont cry

2016-04-06 15:52

ROFL RIP ESL League

2016-04-06 15:53

WHAT?!??!?!?!? 3.5M. WHATTTA AJH8MFJ9SDFMSDF OMFGFG FGOFMGOFDMGODMFGKDFG OH MY GOD

2016-04-07 11:05

Meanwhile teams like Flipside, godsent and dignitas may dont even have the chance to qualify?

2016-04-06 15:29

16 replies

dignitas and faze are probably invited... i guess invites are for 1. fnatic 2. navi 3. astralis 4. vp 5. envy 6. nip 7. faze 8. dignitas 2 qualifier spots left

2016-04-06 15:30

13 replies

but mouz and g2 have to qualify? Thats strange :/ And f3 played the major and has not even the chance to qualify, but AGG, Gambit, HR and SK do? smh

2016-04-06 15:32

i think it would be fair to invite top 6 instantly and let f3, mouse, g2, dig faze etc qualify

2016-04-06 15:33

at least give 2 spots in the closed qualifier to open qualified teams imho

2016-04-06 15:34

G2 and Mouz should be invited instead of faze and other teams like them. Lets see what G2 can do if they don't have the mental barrier of reaching top 8. They always lose of pressure. Envy and Faze should be the qualifiers

2016-04-06 16:31

1 reply

"They always lose of pressure." No, they dont. Every player on G2 has won multiple tournaments. They are just not good enough at the moment and were unfortunate/stupid in the past.

2016-04-07 03:29

impossible where is invite for LG, Liquid, CLG, C9?

10 eu / 10 na spots

5 replies

ah, okey im blind =D i feel bad cuz CSGL don't have spot in qualifiers CSGL > AGG

In terms of throwing? no h8 m8 :D

2016-04-06 15:43

In overall They always beat AGG online, offline np

2016-04-06 15:47

CSGL beat AGG but they are crap against foreign teams. AGG plays significantly better, especially on LAN.

2016-04-06 16:03

Im cheering to both teams so i dont really care who is better :D

2016-04-06 19:50

They really should have announced the invites. If they know the ones that have to qualify since they weren't invited, surely they know who was invited.

What in the actual fuck ? Why wouldnt they send Flipside.. Godsent.. Dignitas ??

2016-04-06 15:45

mouz proved @ major that they are better then F3..

2016-04-07 05:30

top 3-4 in cluj

with 3 out of 5 players still left....seems reasonable for on success based on a pretty damn close victory over mouz :D

2016-04-06 15:31

MONEY TALKS

2016-04-06 16:35

ye even g2 are better than faze imo

2016-04-06 17:06

Think called ad revenue. Faze brings in more viewers than mouseports

2016-04-06 19:42

I wouldn't be so sure, everyone apparently wants to see Niko play.

2016-04-07 02:19

But Niko will join FaZe!!!!1111

2016-04-07 03:30

Inside the CSGO community,yeah,but apparently FaZe playing will bring those CoD scrubs to watch CSGO which leads to more viewers

2016-04-07 06:32

No I REALLY doubt many would switch to another game just because of an organization, they probably don't even know the team is competing in a tournament.

2016-04-08 01:20

because they are faceit. They are popular regardless of their ingame performence.

2016-04-06 19:53

mouz sucks too

2016-04-06 20:27

many fans -> more viewers -> they get invited to errything

2016-04-07 17:48

No Flipsid3? Yet they invite SK, AGG and HR, all of whom aren't as good as F3. I want this F3 are a bad team meme to fucking die, they're just as good as the teams they decided to invite.

hr > f3

2016-04-06 16:08

*F3>neophyte

2016-04-06 16:50

n1 joke

2016-04-06 19:36

that's insane.Please no bad teams.

dude they have an entire fucking league for NA ofc there's 7 bad teams for you

2016-04-06 15:08

12 bad teams

2016-04-06 15:17

wot? only 10 bad teams per region and lg are gonna play in na dafuk u on bout??

2016-04-06 15:19

qualifying, mb didn't read it correctly bro

2016-04-06 15:22

no idea wat you're on about m8

2016-04-06 15:23

whatev u guys smokin. tell me. that shiz mus be gud.

i don't smoke, no idea what he's on tho

2016-04-06 16:11

CS:GO scene should start spreading these monies below top20 too. Otherwise we end up to see these same teams over and over again, juts getting more and more money. Compare this to what football nowadays is. There's million dollar teams all over Europe and then one Champions league for them. It could be so that there's 500k open league, where top10 gets monies and top2 advance to closed league of about top20 teams and 2million shared accross (like 250k for top1.. 10k for last). Then top8 could have LAN to compete for final 1m with similar share as in Major. This approach would widen the field and make CS:Go pro actually feasible job (instead of pouring 90% of monies to four top teams in the world)

8 replies

2016-04-06 15:44

Top teams will eventually stop playing leagues with 100k~~ prizepool which opens doors for lower teams

2016-04-06 15:57

This might or might not happen. It depends how wide CS:Go audience grows. As when top teams stop attending smaller price pool tournaments, so will stop the majority of the audience. You won't be arranging 100k prizepools for 1000-5000 people audiences. So the end result could be that those tournaments die and go extinct. If audience keeps growing, so will the overall interest to e.g. local leagues and these 100k prizepool tournaments could survive.

2016-04-06 16:36

so you want KKona to get hundreds of thousands of dollars?

2016-04-06 16:15

Thank you for your good point.. This guy just went full retard

2016-04-06 18:24

no problem i can understand his thinking but it dosent work like that, we don't give lots of money to t9999 teams

2016-04-06 21:26

but noone will watch league where top20-30 teams are playing. views=money...

2016-04-07 05:33

Yes, but it is for drawing attention of all teams in the field towards your league and in the same time allow possibilities for more teams and hence get even wider audience. With current trend where most of the prize monies available go to top8 teams and rest of the teams pretty much do not get anything, will lead to situation in which we have top8 teams in each high prize pool tournament.. and those tournaments, that have significant amount of prize pool but less than top tournaments, will die off as no top teams participating. We need to widen the top team pool and that requires more teams to get more monies. E.g. with current trend DH and starseries will have hard times to get top teams participate next year. So those 100-250k tournaments will most likely die off, because not enough people will go there to see how well E-Frag, Torpedo, PENTA, CPH or ENCE does. I suspect that DH has to increase the prize pool or reduce event amount from 3 annual to 1 annual inorder to survive.

2016-04-07 12:56

WAT

wtf

Watafak, after valve's 1 million $ rise in major tournaments, everyone else started to raise up as well

2016-04-06 15:04

Volvo next major will probably have even higher prize pool

2016-04-06 15:12

12 replies

1,1 millonen dollar nokappa

2016-04-06 15:20

1.01 Million dollar

1000001 dollars

2016-04-06 16:58

1,0 million and a bag of chips(1 per team)

2016-04-06 17:53

Throwback to when a few liters of coke were the prize at a LAN

2016-04-08 06:56

One billion dollar mlg 420 doritos event . spoilers me and DOSIA X GOD and joelz will win the tournament w/ 2 bots

Jarm0 on LAN I arent think so

2016-04-06 15:35

adren clutch king with 100 ping

+1 Black ddk

2016-04-07 13:07

The international or what ever its called In dota comes to CS :D

2016-04-06 15:25

would ruin CS :/ Nobody would watch normal LAN tournaments, like APM (tier 2 teams) and etc, only Majors (for stickers, drops), LAN tournaments like ESL katowice (bigest ones).

2016-04-06 15:28

True, but it Can mostly only be the next, or make a LCs system instead, where minor teams Can qualify, two worst shall re qualify. Or smth dunno ;P

ôol

holy shit

1.75million dollar each season thats sick indeed

2016-04-06 18:27

Not all prize, but at least esl can cry themselves to sleep :)

2016-04-06 20:57

bannana

2016-04-06 15:48

mohamed hadid

2016-04-06 16:04

mohamed > fake flag

2016-04-07 22:45

sick fam

Sick

nice

wooooo

1st

?????????

wow

first

yeee

small tournament )))

LMAO

WOW

OMG

wut

E-Leaugue? WHO???

You dumb right? E-league 1 season 1.2million dollar faceit 1 season 1.75million dollar. Its not like its that much of a difference.. Sur 500k is a lot but you probably thought (like 95% in here) 3.5million LOL 1.2 is so much lower when in fact its 1.75 and 1.2

2016-04-06 18:30

Oh shit!?!

dafq

Finally some decent prize pools

noice

o_o

322 league

holy crap

what?

WOW!

very nice faceit!

not expected o_O

Holy jesus balls, n1

kkona

Imagine GOD Ocean at an international LAN Kreygasm

2016-04-06 15:05

Wtf

Holy moly!

Why waste this money on na?

Prize Pool competition

everyone stepping it up with the prize money nice

:DDDD

3.5 MIL? PogChamp

I read 35 xd

Total payout, not for one team. Still cool

thats insane for the whole things still

2016-04-06 15:09

Its 500k more then valve sponsored majors so its insane indeed. Majors payout 3million (not including the stickermoney cuz then we would reach 8-10million probably. But prizemoney they payout 500k more which is a shame for valve xD

2016-04-06 18:32

yeah, i agree. when valve is sponsoring a major, it should be way higher, but dota is valves fav baby and they get all the prizemoney valve gives

2016-04-06 18:34

Thats not so true.. Its a crowdfunding prizemoney. Youre right on frankfurt majors etc cuz there they payout 3million each major (3majors) but if you were talking about the international then youre not right with your point. Its crowdfunding (special skins etc but the money goes into prizemoney which is better then in csgo cuz the winner gets the most and not the best saling team/player)

2016-04-06 18:46

K THEN wonder how long it'll take for valve to increase the prize pool again. 5 years?

Fugg

WHATTTT

New Hr vs Ex Hr

2016-04-06 15:06

Echo fox <3

PogChamp

DAYUM

I wonder when faceit will announce new servers that arent complete garbage...

no good teams let down.

Those are the qualifiers, mate.

ESEA $1.5M FACEIT $3.5M PogChamp

2016-04-06 15:07

Is it a major???

rip majors

Its 500k more overall in prizemoney. Majors in fact payout up to 8-10million a year when including the stickermoney

but the stickers are not added to the prize, raises at least one major USD3.000.000 but the prize does not change, the rest is for the players (50%) and 50% is for valve

2016-04-06 20:00

seriously?

noo

Wow

Why a danish team in NA qualifiers wtf?

Canadian, not danish. FailFish

It had Danish flag earlier, must have been wrong team FailFish

where all this money coming from?

subscribers, sponsors and twitch

2016-04-06 15:10

Trump loan some money to CS organisations.

WOAH

seeeeeeeeeeeck

alibaba>faceit

Oh my fuckin' god.. That's great!

good nobody will care about majors anymore

of course they will! nt kebabtares

2016-04-06 15:21

Typical muslimano brain... Majors payout 3million dollars (3x 1million). Faceit pays out 3.5 million (2x 1.75million). If you include the stickermoney thas getting payed out after each major you get up to 10million dollar probably (each year).

2016-04-06 18:37

it was a bait lol

2016-04-07 03:26

whaAT the

2016-04-06 15:11

So they invite the worst possible teams for 3.5 MILLION dollars?

its a qualifier for it

yeah ik just cancer teams

2016-04-06 17:59

Murica brain lol

2016-04-06 15:15

fakeflagger

EleGiggle

lol

lame

3.5 million? Wowwww

Rekt major

Another dumbass

2016-04-06 18:38

Eh who is danish OBEY in the NA qualifier? Misstype?

I assume it's obey.alliance

2016-04-06 15:16

Thanks, makes more sense :D

HOLY CHEAT lol

2016-04-06 15:13

This +++1111

could also read "$35million over the course of 20 seasons" :)

you so intelligent ))

$35million my friend! can you believe it?! its more than all majors combined. faceit outdid them all

i mean your multiplication m9

2016-04-06 18:01

alibaba rekt

2016-04-06 15:14

ez for X GOD

Looked at link from a friend saw 35million on link. Opened link completely let down by 3.5 million

that's 3 leagues now... and probably more to come. honestly not a fan. far too many leagues

so? all last year a lot of teams were competing in 3, esl pro league faceit and cevo. now most top teams have left cevo alone so now we have pro league eleague and ecs. anymore big leagues might become too much but 3 is just fine.

2016-04-06 16:27

But cevo increased prizemoney from 100k to 125k why leave cevo? :(

2016-04-06 18:40

CEVO will be used for Tier 2-ish teams then. As bigger leagues are announced the better teams slowly stop attending the (now) smaller events and they get filled up by Tier 2/3. See Copenhagen Games for example.

2016-04-07 00:45

but they increased the prizemoney for 25k thats insane!!! why leave cevo :(((((((

2016-04-07 12:47

cevo and faceit aren't like these pro leagues that last 3+ months.

2016-04-07 01:20

LETS GO NAVI :D!

wow they made alot on those cheating admins selling cheats. haha

come on the most generic possible name ever

how about you fix your servers first?

2016-04-06 15:18

I presume it's online? A LAN league would be cool.

Nice one faceit:)

Where is Flipsid3 in the qualifiers?!

gg E-league

EZ FOR AGG

holy moly :D

Imagine all the cheating.. AWW YEAH!

TL;DR someone?

Just read, it's big news for the growth of the community

Basically Faceit season 4 with 3.5 million prize pool

2016-04-06 16:28

basically what do u mean. the lan tourament finals will have 1 million like the major?

2016-04-06 16:42

Read the fucking article.

2016-04-06 17:04

boi

Holy shit

cheaters continuing grabbing cash!

tempo storm deserves invite

14 replies

Splyce and ence deserve a invite

Seven deserve an invite

lol MalefiQ>seven

11 replies

Nah seven took 3 malefiq players :-(

10 replies

Wtf? When and who???

2016-04-06 15:49

9 replies

Recently after cph games. They replaced kruzer, ofvirkur and peterr for kutter, pallibondi and bdsm

2016-04-06 15:55

Ooo nice picks, I hope they will do good international now

2016-04-06 16:55

Ez for pallib0ndi

2016-04-07 13:08

They dont even male news for SpaceSoldiers anymore, why should they do it for malefick? :>

Becuase pallib0ndi top 1 world

2016-04-06 16:56

is that a malefiq player?

2016-04-06 18:02

He was if this icelandic guy speaks true

2016-04-06 18:04

I speak the truth dawg, you can read about it here. seven.gl/articles/news/general/22/new-ti..

2016-04-06 19:31

ty m8

2016-04-07 16:04

2 Seasons 1.75M;ea Online league over the course of what? 4 months? Thats not that much more. Also inb4 NiP win cause ddos

2016-04-06 15:24

Haha

True though

Ez for me.AHHAHA

Holy Moly Guamole! That's some gud money

CS still does not deserve even a prizepool with million, you make it 3.5kk........................

U fucjing ruski monkey go drink vodka and play dotka

2016-04-06 17:45

hard times for tier 2 eu teams- mouz and g2 are easily stronger than the biggest part of invited na teams lol

boys we are getting there!!!

wtf is these teams, this tournament will be shit for sure. they invite shit teams wtf lol

these teams are invited for the qualifier, not the tournament

yet, alot of other teams that should be in qualifier, not these bots

2016-04-06 15:40

Tell me other teams? Or nvm saw your name.

2016-04-06 17:32

not ence for sure LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

2016-04-06 22:11

you must not have a good attention spam before you feel the need to react negatively

3.5kk and only bad teams, ok faceit

Those are just the teams playing for the 2 qualifiers. I'm not sure why they didn't announce the invited teams, but we can all assume most of them.

2016-04-06 15:36

kk means a million?

2016-04-06 16:01

Yep

2016-04-06 17:01

wait k means thousand kk means miölion and kkk is racist?

2016-04-06 18:03

No drugs, dude, you will get killed EDIT: it is, not in your country though

what drugs are you talking about?

2016-04-07 09:29

International in 1 season 18 000 000 in cs go 1 000 000 and skins cost x10 more then in dota also wtf

actually international has like 1.5 million prize pool from valve , all the other money is crownfunded.You can search for it in google compendium :)

2016-04-07 23:35

Go Gambit!

ez KKONA

POGCHAMP PogChamp

LMFAO

WHAT THE FUUUUUCK!

2016-04-06 15:38

inb4 3.5mil roubles

Sellout

meh, leagues suck

OH MY FUCK**G GOD

$3.5M is too much for a game full of cheaters

Agreed. Need new VAC wave before faceit

2016-04-06 15:42

So many new leagues, so nice.

Nice one, but sad that this championship without valve support, i mean no stickers etc.

wowy

Faceit Anti Cheat is too stronk Kappa

ohh right. thats why they had a admin cheating. and providing cheats hahaha delusional

2016-04-06 18:50

ez nip

Wow those teams! 3.5 mil and no tier one teams

idiot? Cuz i am not

Those are the qualifiers mate.

2016-04-06 16:21

Ah... the one time i dont finish the article. I wont reply as i will probably now delete my account and hang my head in shame.

2016-04-06 23:50

nice !! been waiting for this

2016-04-06 15:50

GO GO AGG

AGG instead of GODSENT? Where´s the logic in this? :/

2016-04-06 15:51

I really hope Gambit makes the cut

oversaturation? - check. possibility of same match ups over and over again? - check. what a boring time ahead of us..

are you mad? CAUSE IM NOT are you mad? - check.

KKona?

2016-04-06 15:58

ez KKona // KKona

Nice

need asian division

2016-04-06 16:09

Holy fucking shit

2016-04-06 16:12

ZzzzZ online matches full og ddos all year long ZzzzZ

2016-04-06 16:13

nice :)

2016-04-06 16:14

how?

2016-04-06 16:17

omg

ebanulis v kray s budjetom

mby invest to proper anticheat and man power to check and ban hackers you dumb shits on hackIT.com

2016-04-06 16:22

Kreygasm

2016-04-06 16:23

no lg no, fnatic, no navi, shit tournament spotted

reading is your friend.

2016-04-06 16:51

wont watch

2016-04-06 16:25

damn son ! 3.5 million !!!!

2016-04-06 16:26

hooooooooly shiiit

ESL better step up their game

I don't know if this League will Feature Tier1 Teams because I think that many Teams already have Contracts with Turner

huuuge

2016-04-06 16:32

no lg?

2016-04-06 16:33

THESE ARE the qualifier teams...obviously LG will play main event.

there should be more invites for teams like flipside, godsend, CSGL, efrag. These teams could got qualified over those invited teams but they have no chance doing so...

suck it Alibaba

This is amazing news. Next year will probably be $5m! We are growing and so are the winnings of skins :^)

2016-04-06 16:38

THAT'S INSANE where are godsent at thoooooooo

2016-04-06 16:44

Glad to see even more 250k$+ tourneys appearing. 3.5$m is quite the number to be giving away.

2016-04-06 16:57

Epsilon destroyed 2 of those invited teams...

2016-04-06 17:08

3.5 million , too small for dota noKappa

2016-04-06 17:14

CSGL, F3>Gambit, AGG

2016-04-06 17:15

C S G O S T R O N G - - - > Write - 5 0 2 3 3 - for 2 $

2016-04-06 17:16

kudos to them, did a great job for csgo

2016-04-06 17:21

3.5 OMGGGGGGGGGGGGGG

2016-04-06 17:27

Ibuypower not invited?

2016-04-06 17:30

where is csgl and flipside?

2016-04-06 17:41

2016-04-06 17:43

Just some speculation for invites: EU: Fnatic Navi Astralis Nip Envyus Virtus.Pro Dignitas Faze NA: Luminosity Liquid CLG Cloud9 Tempo Storm Renegades Optic NRG

Black DDK is lyfe

Awesome! Thank you twitch and faceit!

2016-04-06 17:57

They need to make c9 qualify. End of story.

2016-04-06 18:10

4 shit NA teams but no godsent?? I highly doubt that they will get invited straight to the league...

2016-04-06 18:26

Mom, i'm cyber sportsman

-agg +csgl pls..

HR MOUSE QUALIFIED

2016-04-06 18:35

NICE

2016-04-06 18:44

Ez for LG

2016-04-06 18:53

INSANE!

2016-04-06 19:00

Haha nice! Valve needs to bump the prize pool from the majors again ;P

2016-04-06 19:10

nice.

2016-04-06 19:12

Next great news for esport! :)

2016-04-06 19:14

ez for kkona

2016-04-06 19:27

3.5million dollar league but can't provide stable servers for premium members. Nice!

2016-04-06 19:33

how the fuck does a team like faze or dig get invited over G2 and mouz who are 10x better?

even godsent > faze

2016-04-06 19:40

2016-04-06 20:10

ez money 4 ence

2016-04-06 20:33

DAAAAAAAMN

2016-04-06 20:40

Mega cheats incoming..

2016-04-06 20:46

i need 25 replies pls help <33

2016-04-06 20:48

at your service

2016-04-06 22:00

NO F3 WTF IS THIS SHIT

2016-04-06 21:23

2016-04-06 22:14

2016-04-06 22:17

csgo

2016-04-06 22:42

BO2 league. retarded

2016-04-06 22:55

holy fucking shit

2016-04-06 22:59

20eu + 10na teams. lan with 16teams

2016-04-06 23:06

Majors = tier2 tournaments

2016-04-06 23:38

Time for Eleague to up their prize pool

2016-04-07 00:17

expected

2016-04-07 00:34

lg tempo liquid c9 clg optic nrg renegades

2016-04-07 01:27

2016-04-07 05:21

its mean we dont see lg vs navi???

2016-04-07 06:34

woooo

2016-04-07 06:57

youtube.com/watch?v=iOpJywrdCuQ&nohtml5=..

-SK +SpaceS

2016-04-07 07:04

When did the open qualifier for this start exactly? :>

2016-04-07 07:32

ayyye everyone is upping the ante, i wanna see echo fox get some wins

2016-04-07 08:21

doesnt matter how much prize pool when so many people on this platform are cheating

2016-04-07 11:07

holy COW

2016-04-07 11:17

2016-04-07 11:29

time to start taking csgo seriously hahha

2016-04-07 11:34

ha ha yeah exactly, in 10 years gamers will be making billions off csgo LOL

2016-04-08 13:38

why no asian

2016-04-07 12:49

ez for KKona

2016-04-07 13:58

well ..

2016-04-07 16:24

i wantz SAGGERTON in

2016-04-07 17:11

Next price pool: $1b loool

2016-04-08 13:37

Wow! Nice!

2016-04-09 09:58