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A report by consulting firm Geelmuyden Kiese shows that about 77 percent of visitors to Malm? were in the city solely for the League of Legends event. About 19,600 tickets were purchased for the finals, which ran from September 10-11, with 85 percent of viewers attending for each of the two days.
Due to the sellout crowds, extra seating had to be installed in Malm? Arena. Over half of the audience members were foreign guests, including representatives from 30 different countries.
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The Chief Executive Officer of Events in the Swedish county of Sk?ne, Pehr Palm, also noted that a significant numbers of the attendees either worked in or studied technological fields.
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“As many as 98.38% of visitors were under the age of 35. Something else that stood out among the audience was the percentage who either study or work in technological fields. – LEC is a reason for travel that targets a clear target group and strengthens and develops Sk?ne as an e-sports and event destination,” said Palm.
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The Chief Executive Officer of Malm? Arena, Karin M?rtensson, stated that the city is conveniently located for such events.
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“The numbers in the report speak for themselves – Malm? is a popular and easily accessible city to visit in connection with events,” she said.
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The recreation director in Malm?, Johan Hermansson, added: “Once again, Malm? has shown itself as an event city for the really big world events.”
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The Director of EMEA Esports at Riot Games, Alberto Guerrero, said the company was dedicated to ensuring its live finals events not only give fans an amazing experience, but also add value to the partner cities’ economies and cultures.
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“We look forward to continuing to bring our live shows to fans across the EMEA region and working with our incredible partner cities to replicate the success we saw in Malm? and put League esports on the map across our region,” he said.
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It took the Swedish outfit 19 months to break their title drought, which dated all the way back to their win at the 2017 World Electronic Sports Games.
While the squad has undergone many changes since then, the team that triumphed at Malmo Arena was almost identical to that which took out the WESG title nearly two years ago.
Robin “flusha” Ronnquist, Freddy “KRIMZ” Johansson, Jesper “JW” Wecksell and Maikil “Golden” Selim were all there, with Ludvig “Brollan” Brolin for Jonas “Lekr0” Olofsson the only difference.
Fnatic’s road to the finals started off the worst possible way, when they suffered a painful 7-16 defeat against ENCE in round one of the group stage. However, the Swedish outfit managed to bounce back with a dominant run in the lower bracket, where they defeated TYLOO (2-1), G2 (2-0) and FURIA (2-0) to secure a spot in the final six.
In round one of playoffs, Fnatic got paired with Ninjas in Pyjamas, who failed to put up much resistance against their compatriots, who dominated them on both Dust II (16-12) and Overpass (16-9) to win the series 2-1.
Entering the semi-finals, Fnatic met with Astralis, who were expected to be the toughest challenge the Swedes faced so far into the tournament but proved to be anything but. Fnatic crushed Astralis on Overpass (16-9) to which they added a closely fought 25-23 win on Nuke, to book a meeting with Team Vitality in the grand finals on Sunday, October 6.
Vitality kicked off the grand finals with a 16-14 win on Dust II, which put them in an excellent position to win their first LAN event since ECS Season 7 Finals in early June. However, things did not go as planned for the French.
On Inferno, Fnatic looked much stronger from the start, and while they almost ended up throwing the series by letting Vitality close the gap of six map points, Fnatic pushed through and came out on top (19-16) to tie the series at 1-1.
Despite starting the final map (Mirage) slow, Fnatic managed to bounce back in the second half to crush Vitality and secure a comfortable 16-13 win and the title of DreamHack Masters champions.
By winning DreamHack Masters Malmo Fnatic earned $100,000 in prizemoney, a direct invite to IEM Katowice 2020, their first IGS S3 point and a much-needed morale boost that will help on their quest to return to their former glory.
The best performing player of the grand finals was Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut who earned an impressive 1.38 HLTV rating, however, even that was not enough to help his team derail Fnatic, who achieved one of the greatest Cinderella stories in the history of CS:GO esports.
]]>Every team is bound to have its ups and downs, however, there are rare occasions where a team experiences anything like EG did this Wednesday in Sweden.
Only last week, Evil Geniuses entered ESL One New York as one of the underdogs and came away with their first win of the Intel Grand Slam season.
That impressive run featured a pair of shock wins over Astralis, including a momentous 3-1 victory in the grand finals.
Having shown immense talent and great form in the Big Apple, EG arrived at DreamHack Masters Malmo as the team to watch and were considered by many to be a chance for the title.
They were paired with Grayhound in the opening round of Group B, which looked like a very favourable fixture for a team fresh off a big tournament win.
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But when it came to execution, EG fell short.
A close 8-7 first half was succeeded by a rather one-sided second half (8-3) when we saw Grayhound walk over EG, who did not have an answer for Ozzie’s T-side strategy.
That 16-10 defeat saw EG descend to the lower bracket, where they met up with the ESL One New York 2018 champions, mousesports.
While EG were still considered strong favourites to win, mouz pushed them to their limits and secured a spot in round two with a 16-10 win on Mirage and a 22-20 overtime victory on Train.
With that, Evil Geniuses were sent packing from Malmo after only two days, joining Team Envy, TYLOO and North as one of the worst teams of the tournament.
Those four teams will take home a consolation prize of $3,000 and an unenviable 13th-16th place finish.
The upcoming CS:GO esports tournament is set to kick off on October 1 at the MalmoMassan Arena and conclude on Sunday, October 6 with the grand finals at Malmo Arena.
It will serve as the third Intel Grand Slam event of the season, following IEM Chicago, which concluded on July 21, 2019, and ESL One: New York, which will kick off next week on Thursday, September 26.
While there are still almost two weeks that separate us from the opening fixtures of the tournament, DreamHack revealed the finalized team list on their official website this week after Team Envy emerged as the champions of NA qualifiers.
The 16 teams heading to Sweden next month are Astralis, ENCE, Team Envy, Fnatic, FURIA, G2 Esports, Grayhound Gaming, Team Liquid, mousesports, Natus Vincere, Ninjas in Pyjamas, North, NRG Esports, OpTic Gaming, TYLOO and Team Vitality.
Envy’s road to Malmo started in the North American closed qualifiers, where they were one of the two teams (alongside eUnited) that received direct invites.
The remaining six teams had to earn their spot via open qualifiers that featured 66 teams from all over North America competing for one of the four available tickets.
Closed qualifiers took off on Wednesday, September 11, featuring eight sides: Team Envy, eUnited, Stay Frosty, ATK, Shark Esports, Swole Patrol, Monstars and Team Divine.
The format of the closed qualifiers featured double-elimination bracket playoffs with all matches played in best-of-three (Bo3) series.
The grand finals, however, used a best-of-five (Bo5) format, with an additional rule that gave a one-map advantage to the team that earned their spot in the finals via the upper bracket.
Team Envy started their NA qualifiers campaign with a fixture against Team Divine, who were no match for 2015 Major champions. In that match, Envy showed no mercy and crushed the newcomers in two swift rounds 16-10 and 16-8, to secure a spot in the semi-finals of the upper bracket.
There Envy faced off with Swole Patrol, who earned their spot in the semis after their quarter-finals opponents, Stay Frost, forfeited the match due to scheduling issues.
Despite being gifted a spot in the semi-finals, Swole Patrol put up a solid fight in map one (16-14), only to suffer a humiliating defeat on Inferno (2-16) and a close 14-16 defeat on Train.
By defeating Swole Patrol, Envy entered the upper bracket finals, where they met with eUnited.
eUnited as one of the two favourites to win the qualifiers did not fail to put up a tough fight, which pushed Team Envy to their limits on both Inferno and Nuke.
Unfortunately for eUnited, however, Envy managed to push through and edged past them with two closely fought wins, 19-15 on Inferno and 14-15 on Nuke, to secure a spot in the grand finals.
In the grand finals, Team Envy re-joined with eUnited, who had no issues crushing Sharks Esports in the lower bracket finals (2-0) and were now looking for revenge.
While filled with the desire to avenge their defeat four days prior, eUnited failed to derail Envy for the second time in a row.
Envy kicked off the grand finals with a 16-10 win on Nuke, lost to eUnited 14-16 on Inferno and closed out the grand finals with a dominant 16-9 win on Mirage.
With that, Envy became one of the 16 teams that will travel to Malmo at the start of October, to compete for the largest slice of $250,000 prize pool and a point which will count towards their IGS S3 rankings.
The French Counter-Strike: Global Offensive giants are one of 10 teams that have joined the fight for US $250,000 prize money and the coveted DreamHack Masters title.
G2 are the ninth team to accept a direct invite, following Astralis, ENCE, Fnatic, FURIA, Team Liquid, Ninjas in Pyjamas, NRG, and Team Vitality.
OpTic Gaming, the undisputed underdogs of the field, earned their spot back in June by winning DreamHack Open Summer 2019, where the Danes lost only one map in their climb to the top.
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Despite sitting among the top 10 teams in the CS:GO esports rankings, G2 will also enter the tournament as outsiders. However, they have improved drastically in the last couple of months with a streak of decent results.
Fifth place at DreamHack Masters Dallas, a runner-up finish in the ESL Pro League S9 finals and a solid run at IEM Chicago have catapulted G2 from 15th spot at the start of May to the eighth in the global rankings by the end of July, meaning they are currently the sixth-strongest team competing in Malm?.
Still, a lot can change in the two months leading up to the event. G2 will take that time to prepare by participating in the StarLadder Berlin Major and ESL One New York, the latter of which will conclude only two days before kick-off in Sweden.
With 10 spots already filled, DreamHack Masters Malm? 2019 now has only six more slots up for grabs. One of those will go to the champions of Chinese qualifiers, whereas the remaining five are reserved for invited teams.
Following DreamHack events in Rio de Janeiro, Tours, Dallas, and DreamHack Open Summer in J?nk?ping, the event is set to skip Montreal and head directly to Malm? for the third time.
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After successful events in Malm? in 2016 and 2017, the 2018 DreamHack Masters moved to Stockholm, but Sweden’s third-largest city re-appeared on the DreamHack schedule in 2019 for what will be the best-paid DreamHack event of the year.
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Just like previous instalments of the DreamHack Masters, the 2019 edition will once again host 16 teams in a group stage at Malm?M?ssan with eight teams progressing to the playoffs at Malm? Arena. Unlike the last last two, which were held in August and September, this year’s event will run from October 1-6.
As the tournament is still almost three months away, the list of the participating teams is nowhere near complete; however, those spots will start filling up over the coming weeks.
The first team which earned their spot at DreamHack Masters Malm? were OpTic Gaming, who won the DreamHack Open Summer 2019 in a convincing fashion, only losing one map throughout the whole tournament. Earlier this week, organisers announced Astralis as the first team invited to the tournament. A few days later, Fnatic also accepted an invitation.
DreamHack Malm?, along with the StarLadder Berlin Major, will be a great opportunity for Fnatic to get back on the horse following their disappointing run at ESL Pro League S9 and ESL One Cologne, where on both occasions they finished 9th-12th.