Fnatic Invited to ESL One Cologne

fnatic-invited-to-esl-one-cologne

ESL announced that Fnatic is the third team to receive direct invite for the upcoming ESL One Cologne 2018 CS:GO tournament. Earlier the organizers invited Cloud9 and SK Gaming.

The third direct #ESLOne Cologne 2018 invite goes to none other than the reigning #IEM Katowice World Champions - @Fnatic!https://t.co/EfHNuAKO6E pic.twitter.com/ob58ZvIpcM

— ESL Counter-Strike (@ESLCS) 4 апреля 2018 г.

ESL One Cologne 2018 will take place at Lanxess-Arena on July 3-8. Overall the tournament will feature 16 teams, half of them will be invited. The tournament’s prize pool is set at $300,000, which makes it a part of the Intel Grand Slam Season 1 – a team that wins four premier events organized by either ESL or DreamHack will receive additional $1,000,000 in prize money. At the moment SK Gaming has two points – the Brazilian squad emerged victorious at both ESL One Cologne 2017 and ESL Pro League Season 6 Finals. Meanwhile Fnatic after acquiring Maikil "Golden" Selim as their new in-game leader managed to find its playstyle and win at IEM XII World Championship, their first and at the moment the only Grand Slam event. Moreover, later they emerged victorious at World Electronic Sports Games 2017. Although Cloud9 haven’t won a Grand Slam event this season, but their invite was quite expected – the North American team is still the reigning major champions, although its roster is still not settled as the team recently lost two players – Tyler "Skadoodle" Latham went inactive, while Jacky "Stewie2K" Yip was transferred to SK Gaming. Later the team signed Pujan "FNS" Mehta. The team is yet to announce its fifth member.

Earlier ESL announced their new Dota 2 event – ESL One Birmingham, the first ever major tournament in the UK.