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It hasn’t taken Valve, developers of Counter Strike: Global Offensive too long to announce what will be the eighth consecutive Major Championship in their series of games. After the thrilling finale to the DreamHack Open in Cluj-Napoca, Romania recently, it has been announced that the next major will take place, for the first time, in the United States.
The venue will be Columbus, Ohio and the tournament will take place between the 29th March and the 3rd April, with the final two days of action (the semi finals and finals) slated to take place at the Nationwide Arena.
Major League Gaming will sponsor the event and a $250,000 prize pool has been guaranteed for the first ever CS:GO Major event to be held on American soil. The first two days of action have been scheduled to take place at the smaller MLG Arena where group games and the quarter finals will be played.
There has also been rumours that an All Star Match will take place in addition to the Grand Final match on Sunday featuring some of the best CS:GO players of all time in a one-off match up.
For those of you who can’t get to Columbus to watch live, all six days of action will be streamed in high quality by MLG, so you can follow the action as it happens online.
Fans can opt to support their favourite teams by purchasing exclusive MLG Columbus 2016 stickers. Proceeds from these sales will be split with 50% going to players and other eSports organisations. This is by no means a small deal as over the course of the three-Major Championship season since 2015, $9m was generated through prizes and sticker sales alone.
Last time around, the CS:GO stream recorded peak viewing figures of 1.2 million which is a record for the event and that figure is only expected to increase as eSports become more online.
The teams that will qualify include the eight teams finishing in the qualification positions from the last major, the DreamHack Open Cluj-Napoca, plus there will be a number of offline qualifying events in the run up to March 29th, during which a further eight teams will earn their qualification spot alongside those already invited.
CS:GO Fragbite Masters Season 5 draws to a close this weekend
After a qualification tournament stretching back to the start of September, following two qualifiers, the quarter finals, a Last Chance qualifier, and a Round of 16 plus playoffs, the final four teams will face off this weekend from Friday 4th December through to Sunday 6th December in the CS:GO Fragbite Masters event in Stockholm, Sweden.
The identity of three of the four teams who will contest this tournament and who will win their share of a prize pool of over $60,000 are already known, with Fnatic as the Showdown Champions, Ninjas in Pyjamas as the Blue Bracket Winners and SK Gaming as the Orange Bracket Winners already confirmed.
The final place yet to be decided comes from the Consolodation bracket where two teams must battle it out on the 2nd December to claim the final spot in the playoffs. Team SoloMid (who won this event last time around) will face off against DenDD for that place.
What is absolutely certain is that none of the four finalists will want to finish fourth as this would mean that they miss out on being one of the top three seeds that guarantee themselves a place in the next Fragbite Masters Season 6 Finals.
Having comethrough the online section, the four teams will convene in Sweden to battle out the final which will see all matches competed over a best of three format.
As yet, there are no schedule for fixtures lined up, but when the fixtures have been confirmed, there should be plenty of eSports betting to enjoy across all the match ups from the culmination of this three month event.
With over $27,000 up for grabs for the winner, plus a top seeding at the next Fragbite Masters event, this is one prize that the four remaining Premier level CS:GO teams will be doing their utmost to win.
League of Legends IeSF 7th eSports World Championships will play to a close
Get yourself off to the eSports betting markets quickly over the next few days as the seventh IeSF World Championship event is played out in Seoul, South Korea.
This is a nation-based event and sixteen of the best League of Legends national teams have been competing against each other to win the Gold, Silver and Bronze prizes on offer.
Each of the sixteen teams were drawn into one of four groups with each team taking on the others in the group during this initial stage. Matches were a best of one shootout and the group games threw together some interesting results.
Team Serbia qualified with a 100% record in Group A with Team Israel in the end taking the second spot ahead of Team Mongolia and Team Taiwan in what was a very closely contested group. Teams Switzerland and Thailand will join them in the quarter finals from Group B, with Teams China and Romania from Group C and Teams Russia and South Korea from Group D
Of course, the always strong South Korean team, with home advantage, are ranked as the most likely team to win this event, and they have been given a draw in the Quarter Finals against Romania. Serbia will take on Thailand, China will face Russia and in the last of the quarter finals Israel will take on Switzerland.
From now on, the competition enters a straight knockout phase, with losing teams eliminated and the winners progressing onto the semi finals which will be played on Friday, with the Final itself taking place on Saturday 5th December.
Action from the event is being streamed on the ever popular Twitch service, so if you fancy a flutter on which country will emerge triumphant, why not check out the latest odds at your chosen eSports betting provider now?
