ESL yesterday announced that they would be taking the ESL Premiership Summer Season Finals to the UK’s largest gaming exhibition EGX at the NEC in Birmingham.
In a rather bold move, ESL have announced that they have moved away from the MCM Comic Con events they have taken the Premiership finals to before, and changed city and organiser, with EGX playing host to the UK Premiership Finals.
EGX is the UK’s largest gaming event, and has played host to esports before with organisations such as Gfinity hosting both CS:GO and League Of Legends at the event in some form or fashion. However, it seems that ESL will be taking the UK’s best and brightest to EGX this September, with the UK Premiership Finals set to kick off. Of course in addition this year, the Counter-Strike teams at the Finals will be duking it out for a spot in the ESEA Mountain Dew League Season 26, which will give a UK team an opportunity on a big stage to perform on a weekly basis. If they manage to do well enough, they may well eat in to a chunk of the expected $150k prize pool that might be on offer (we base it on current season prize pool).
In the current league season, Team CeX are currently topping the table with a 100% win record, Reason Gaming are currently second with a 100% record, whilst fish123 & Team Endpoint round up the Top 4 playoff places. Team Method currently sit at the bottom of the table with a 0:3 record thus far.
The Trophy they are all playing for at EGX in September (Credit: ESL Facebook)
From ESL’s Coverage Website:
Today we are proud to announce that we are taking the live finals of The ESL Premiership, the UK national esports league, to the floors of EGX for the very first time, the finals mark the culmination of an entire season’s hard work for teams in The Premiership and we couldn’t be any more excited to do it in style!
Winners of both our Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and League of Legends finals will both qualify for the opportunity to compete on a European level as part of ESL’s path to pro initiative. As the industry leader in growing and fostering grassroot talent, the League of Legends finals winners will gain an automatic spot into the coveted EU Challenger Series Qualifiers for 2018 granting 1 team the possibility of further progression to the Challenger Series and potentially access to the LCS.
Not only that but for the first time ever the winning team in our CounterStrike: Global Offensive finals will gain an automatic spot into the ESEA Mountain Dew League Season 26. This will award our finals winning team the opportunity to compete alongside some of the very best EU teams such as Virtus.Pro and recently crowned Major Champions Gambit Esports.
Alongside European level promotion, these 2 events combined have additional prizing of over £20,000 and give teams a chance to be crowned ESL Premiership Champions and to follow in the footsteps as many previous UK champions.
As well as holding these two finals, we will also be bringing with us the ESL Arena, Powered by Intel as the ESL UK Main Stage plays host to other esports and competitive activities as part of a wider partnership with EGX to be announced in the coming weeks.
“We are super excited about collaborating with EGX this year, year on year, we have seen substantial growth in viewing figures for the ESL Premiership, this move to EGX not only gives us the opportunity to put on the biggest live finals in the Premiership’s five-year history, but increase the audience further through the events savvy. This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of content we’ll be bringing to EGX and we can’t wait to announce more.” – James Dean Managing Director of ESL UK.
“We are delighted to be hosting the biggest finals of ESL’s UK Premiership. Esports is something that resonates with our audience and i’m looking forward to collaborating with the ESL UK to increase the esports content at EGX.” – David Lilley Managing Director of Gamer Events.
EGX takes place from the 21st to the 24th of September at The NEC in Birmingham and tickets are available now, we hope to see you there!
There is currently no other details around how many teams will be heading to EGX in September, when we have the confirmed details, we will release a further update with all the relevant team information. We are currently three weeks into the current league season, Week 4 matches can be found on the ESL UK website and will take place on Monday evening from 7pm.
