ESL Impact women's league set to start

15/3/2022 - 14:47

The league, part of the new CS:GO circuit made for women organized by ESL, is set to start on March 17 and will be broadcast every Thursday and Friday during a six-week period.

The tournament will have 24 teams competing in three regional groups in Europe, North America and South America, with each region consisting of eight teams. Two squads have been directly invited to each regional group, while the other spots have been filled out by teams from the open qualifiers.

Teams in each region are fighting for two qualifying spots in order to reach the culmination of the first season — an eight-team, $150,000 LAN final in June which will take place during IEM Dallas. The other two qualifying spots for the LAN final will be determined via wildcard qualifiers, one for South African and one for Oceanic teams.

Goosebreeder's CLG Red will be competing in the North American group

Regional groups will be played in two round-robin best of three groups, with teams playing each other twice. ESL has also promised to review the format of the tournament after the end of the first season alongside the women players’ council and make adjustments based on their feedback.

Teams that will be playing in the regional stage have also been finalised, with a range of teams competing in all regions; some of the standout names include CLG Red, GODSENT fe and FURIA fe. While HLTV will start covering the games from the regional playoff stage onwards, you can watch the games unfold live every Thursday and Friday on ESL's Twitch channel from March 17 onwards.

Considering the number of women playing Counter-Strike competitively has suffered a sharp drop due to the launch of VALORANT, this is a great opportunity for the female scene to grow and for players to be able to show their ability.

The team list for the regional groups is as follows:

European group

Flawless

gribs

TotalneGituwy

North American group

CLG Red

Little Bocks

Please Send Help

Hot Flash

OSADIA

Slay

Tourmaline

Infamous Girls

South American group

W7M fe

Redragon fe

Quem Sao Elas

ENDGAME

2022-03-15 14:48

1 reply

two Peruvian teams wtfffffff

2022-03-16 16:15

nice

Great news

Nice

2022-03-15 14:49

HELL YEAH!

this is great!

2022-03-15 14:50

what are the top 3 teams? or nobody know at the moment? is there any ranking?

25 replies

CLG red will win NA group and the rest is just a complete gamble

2022-03-15 14:54

yeah for sure clg red is going to win they been grinding for years in the NA scene where there is no female scene basically since val came out and they stuck it out I'm main honestly its dope they org still with them I think godsent is gonna win eu and maybe mibr/furia for SA

2022-03-15 18:37

femalecs.com/ranking/#/ this is the HLTV equivalent for FE CS I'd personally put Nigma Galaxy, GODSENT, and CLG Red as the top 3 - there's a lot of volatility though because the teams rarely play other regions. Also NGX and GODSENT won't face each other for a while bcz they're in different groups

2022-03-15 14:55

13 replies

and who is female s1mple?

2022-03-15 14:59

11 replies

There's actually quite a few cracked players Xia from Ambush FE is only 16 but already killing it - she won't be able to play for a bit tho:( the whole Ambush FE team is one to watch though - they went undefeated in OQ1 Potya from gribs is a very strong AWPer too I could go on but there's just a massive list of players with a lot of talent - we'll have to see what the league has in store for us!

2022-03-15 15:02

10 replies

Great that you know so much about the female scene. I didn't recognise any names from any of the teams really apart from CLG Red and vilga.

2022-03-15 16:09

6 replies

Yeah I kept a close eye on the open qualifiers

2022-03-15 19:36

5 replies

A close eye as in being admin of it haha?

2022-03-15 23:46

4 replies

Ahaha nah I wasn't working them, but I did help out here and there with support, and checked in on the teams They're all so lovely too

2022-03-16 01:02

3 replies

I can imagine. Did you not try to have a shot at qualifying? ^^

2022-03-16 16:16

2 replies

well, I couldn't referee if I did!

2022-03-16 20:29

But then no one to represent the mens)) :( On a more serious note after looking at the stream for a few moments, it seems like this tournament is everything I feared: just made for the sake of throwing out money to female teams. Imo it would have been an amazing opportunity to make content, create storylines, have spotlights on each player... all in all going above just the "let's play it to play it" mentality and make new people get interest for the scene and enabling them to know the players and teams to be able to actually root for their favorite outside of this tournament. So basically just a feeling of a huge opportunity that ESL have missed out on, and overall a bit disrespectful to the players, telling them "You're just here to give us some cheap virtue signalling, now go play your games and shut up no one gives a fuck about it anywyas" :/

2022-03-17 20:15

same :( all of the old pros have gone to valorant, but fun to see new talent that might have a higher ceiling :)

2022-03-15 18:03

wow nice infos dude, ty so much. Didn't know this site, I'll keep my eyes on that. Wich team are your supporting? I'll hope for them to face brazilians at finals hahahaha

2022-03-17 01:56

Well I'm supposed to be reffing so I don't have anyone I'm supporting explicitly, but some teams are very nice to be around:)

2022-03-17 13:51

Automatic Nigma Galaxy supporter here. Let's go!

2022-03-16 01:06

I think Galaxy racer and CLG Red are the only teams not in ESEA open

2022-03-15 15:00

Quite a few teams have made it to higher leagues actually, but a lot of them primarily play in the Prime league, which is another FE league.

Furia fe is dominating SA so hard. They are the big favorites from SA.

2022-03-15 15:59

2022-03-15 18:22

CLG Red, Galaxy Racer fe and probably Godsent fe or Furia fe

2022-03-15 16:55

I don't know much about the female scene yet but I think mibr fem is a good team. They fem line-up was used to be known as better than the male one some time ago lol

2022-03-15 17:10

Bizinha (captain of MIBR female) is really good. But I would say right now Furia female is the best female team in BR, as they usually win against MIBR.

2022-03-15 18:23

nice no know it buddy! I'll be standing in the crowd for bizinha, she used to impact on lobbys with streamers and pros, I'm a fan. Ialso like kaahSensei, hope they face each other on this camp.

2022-03-17 01:22

Let's gooo!!

2022-03-17 22:50

FEMALE CS LETS GO

letsss goo

2022-03-15 14:57

2022-03-15 14:58

ez 4 please send help

LETS GOOOO

Furia's first World Win

I can't wait for this, will never complain about more pro CS, and plus there's a team with a Canadian core and they're actually ranked in the top 10!

+1 love every opportunity to watch CS

2022-03-15 15:49

+1 exactly that

2022-03-17 01:26

2022-03-15 19:46

Twenty3 supremacy

2022-03-15 15:03

2022-03-15 15:06

good news

2022-03-15 15:10

Awesome!

2022-03-15 15:12

why isn't there a tournament site for the games :/

2022-03-15 15:15

No Entropiq? Or they signed that TotalneGituwy lineup?

2022-03-15 15:17

Entropiq Queens did not qualify for the league - they were 4th in the second OQ, slots were given to the top 3

2022-03-16 11:02

The fact that after like 6 months that Galaxy racer doesn't exist and is now Nigma Galaxy and it's not been renamed yet, not for this article nor when their main team was active, is kinda sad.

2022-03-15 15:18

ez 4 goosebreeder

2022-03-15 15:21

I've been looking forward to this ))

2022-03-15 15:28

this is a good thing

Will there be a fantasy ?

2022-03-15 15:33

I doubt bitskins will sponsor this

2022-03-15 15:38

P0tya <3

glhf

Ambush FE 1v5 everyone

2022-03-15 15:47

1 KiKi = 5 others

2022-03-15 20:44

1st title win for Canada in forever, let's go Little Bocks!

2022-03-15 15:48

huge

No Juliano no party

2022-03-15 15:52

ezgeese

Looks to be a cool camp. Good luck to tall teams.

2022-03-15 15:55

Too EZ for Alekhine, no chances for Capablanca

2022-03-15 15:57

cool

2022-03-15 15:58

Nice!

2022-03-15 16:06

poles come here, translate TotalneGituwy pls. The first word seems like "totalniy" in russian which means full, but what does second word mean? Google says it's guitars.

2022-03-15 16:21

git means "good/nice" in polish slang and gituwy means like "nice people"

2022-03-15 16:23

thanks, so team name can be translated as all nice people?

2022-03-15 16:25

totally nice people kinda of

2022-03-15 16:31

TotallyNiceGals is the closest thing I can think of

2022-03-15 16:34

Nice, only if you give them a stage and validation you will get talent and scene growth. It worked great for the academy leagues so why not for female cs?

2022-03-15 16:15

we had female scene once before and the growth was zero. It was after years nothing more than a marketing gag.

2022-03-15 19:30

WTF PERUVIAN TEAM?????

2022-03-15 16:22

I still don't understand why men and women should be seperated in e-sports, but if this helps to get more females into the scene i'm all for it.

2022-03-15 16:26

8 replies

You answered your own doubts, popularization of esports among women etc. The end goal is to make it so top female players/teams can compete in/against top male teams. At least I believe it should be, since esports doesn't have the same physical barriers classical sports have.

2022-03-15 16:37

7 replies

I would love to see mixed teams at some point. We are still missing out on the huge potential that females could bring into esports.

2022-03-15 18:06

if there are females that are ready to work hard as a S1mple sure. But will never happen.

2022-03-15 19:29

I think even now we could have at least one woman in a team but men have to see them as teammates not someone worse aka 'omg how a female could kill me'...

2022-03-15 19:31

''The end goal is to make it so top female players/teams can compete in/against top male teams.'' Yeah, because that worked out so well in literally every other sport.

2022-03-16 09:27

Reading the very last sentence really exceeds your abilities doesn't it?

2022-03-16 15:04

It exceeds your abilities to understand that is irrelevant and the disparity between men and women. Physical or mental sport, they will NEVER be able to compete at the highest level with men. It's all scientifically backed - we have faster reflexes, better hand-eye coordination, much higher competitive drive (big part of which coming from testosterone), gamesense, etc. Chess requires even less physical ability than CSGO, yet I don't see any woman being a competition for men. You forgot that as well?

2022-03-16 17:32

There are women with Grandmaster titles (GM, not WGM). There are/were women (cis women at that before you pull that card out) in other esports like Goddess in R6 or Karma in RL who compete(d) at tier 1 level in their respective games. I'm not assuming we can get to the point where there'll be an equal split between men and women on top teams (even for the simple reason more men than women play competetive games and it's a pretty toxic enviroment). But a situation where there's a say top 1 female team in top 30 hltv, or even just some individual players in top teams, is entirely possible looking a few years in the future.

2022-03-16 17:50

Not interested in tier 10 cs. Hopefully this initiative helps them improve though. Good luck

2022-03-15 16:27

2022-03-15 17:17

Hope to see some high level competition come from this.

2022-03-15 16:28

lets gooooo

2022-03-15 16:29

Gl cs go fe

2022-03-15 16:39

not bad

2022-03-15 16:43

Good move, Valorant started this earlier and I've already seen games covered where female teams beat some male teams in T2 tournaments in NA there. Even though it was some individual games and not something regular we remember how it always looked in CS - trying not to get 16-0d. So it's already a huge progress. If someone doesn't get the idea behind tournaments like this they probably don't understand initatives like National Championships or College/University Championships, or Academy Leagues either.

2022-03-15 16:44

2022-03-15 18:57

next step give female cs 1 spot in major or atleast let them qualify through in separated qualifiers and yeah major would be nice to watch even they got 16-0 or the best first female history to go through groups or 1st female cs team to win major Copium but yeah CS tourney is getting there

2022-03-15 16:47

It's hard for me to see a female cs team winning a major even if there is enough support to raise a female team to a competative level

2022-03-15 17:01

if the major would be filled with NA teams only a female team would win the major.

2022-03-15 19:26

no, they shouldn't do none of that quota bullshit, it doesn't work and would only take away a spot of a better team if anything they should be invited to smaller tournaments and grind like any other team do

2022-03-17 14:51

The people that are against this saying this are just mad. Good shit

2022-03-15 17:02

This is great, I just hope that they actually make sure the production quality is good for these events. When Valorant started its female circuit it was a bit of a mess

2022-03-15 17:09

Indeed, let's hope it will be high quality production!! I watch female CS from Brasil (specially MIBR and Furia, keep your eyes on Bizinha and KaahSensei), and I am really excited to see what is their level against EU and NA female players

2022-03-15 18:18

Good news. Hope big communities such as BR or CIS to support their teams when major stage comes.

2022-03-15 17:12

Good initiative, this is exciting news.

2022-03-15 17:15

T5 CS, hopefully female CS will be better than I remember

2022-03-15 17:29