IEM Global Challenge Is Announced To Be Held Online
The pandemic of COVID-19 keeps pinning down organizers to online events across the world. 2020 has truly been a nightmare for everyone and esports scene also suffers in certain aspects despite its growth due to people staying at home more than ever. Offline tournaments is one of the such crucial areas that suffer.
With months going on with online tournaments everywhere, people were looking for ways to start holding offline tournaments again. Even with the strongest organizations of esports scene though, this is not really being a thing for now. ESL recently announced that they are abandoning the LAN event plans for IEM Global Challenge that has $500,000 prize pool.
Right at the time when people started to have some hope about ending the year with at least a few large-scale LAN events, reemerging threat of COVID-19 meant new lockdowns to be enforced. Therefore ESL had to take a step back regarding a possible LAN event. Health and safety issues are surely not an easy thing to overlook, and ESL is fully aware of it.
IEM Global Challenge will be held between December 15th and 20th, with prize pool staying same. Considering that best teams of Europe and NA will be there for the last event of year, this one is decided to count for Intel Grand Slam.
For the time being, only Heroic and FURIA are known to have their spots as they won the latest regional Major events in Europe and NA respectively. Remaining 6 slots will be occupied by the winners of IEM Beijing EU, IEM Beijing NA, ESL Ranking EU #1–2, ESL Ranking NA and ESL Ranking CIS.
