FLASHPOINT Launched: First Team-Owned CSGO Tournament

After months of negotiations, B Site Inc. officially launched the CSGO tournament called FLASHPOINT.

MIBR, Cloud9, Dignitas, Gen.G, c0ntact Gaming, and OverActive Media, the organization that runs the MAD Lions, are the creators of FLASHPOINT and are also the confirmed teams to participate in the tournament. Meanwhile, B Site Inc. still looking for four more partners.

As for the rest, FLASHPOINT will arrange the open qualifiers in three regions: Europe, North America, South America. The top four teams from Europe (16 teams total) and the top two teams from each of North America and South America (8 totals for each region) will advance to the closed regional qualifiers.

From there, the top two teams will join the original 10 FLASHPOINT teams to participate in the season. Here, the teams will split into three GSL groups, four teams each. In the GSL group stage, the teams will earn points and the top 8 will qualify for the FLASHPOINT final round. The final round will use a double-elimination format.

FLASHPOINT will have two annual seasons and have a bigger prize pool, totaling more than $2 million in 2020. FLASHPOINT will be run by FACEIT, the matchmaking platform that has hosted eight seasons of the Esports Championship Series over the past four years. FACEIT has stopped the ECS tournament due to attending FLASHPOINT.

According to Immortals Gaming CEO Ari Segal, there are many reasons to be excited about FLASHPOINT, but two stand out the most.

“First, there is alignment between the organizations, tournament moderators, cast staff, and players on how and why FLASHPOINT could be different, for the CSGO system as a whole,” said Segal. . “Secondly, this is really a different and new product for fans. Our analysis shows that fans have wanted a product like this for quite some time, and we work hard to bring that request to fruition.”

In FLASHPOINT, players will receive “the highest share of revenue in esports,” said to be more than $1 million dollars in players alone. The players also have equal representation in the tournament committee. This explains why teams chose to create FLASHPOINT instead of participating in ESL Pro League, the most traditional CSGO tournament.

In addition to the teams, three famous cast members also had a direct role in the creation of FLASHPOINT. Duncan “Thorin” Shields will serve as creative director and participate in the narration. Christopher “MonteCriso” Mykles, making his CSGO debut, and Auguste “Semmler” Massonate, will serve as production consultants.

With them are Dan “DDK” Kapadia, James Bardolph, Jason “moses” O’Toole, Anders Blume, Sean “[email protected]”Gares, and Freya Spiers. For Thorin, the process of developing the format and reporting of CSGO tournaments has to be said to be “extremely slow”.

“This tournament is finally what I’ve always wanted in Counter-Strike,” said Thorin. “Not following the traditional sport but going in a new direction.”

Teams participating in FLASHPOINT are completely free to participate in other CSGO tournaments, including Majors or any other party. However, the teams will not participate in the ESL Pro League due to the overlapping times of the two tournaments.