DreamHack unveils invites for Open Leipzig 2020 CS:GO event
Swedish production company and organizers of some of the biggest esports events, DreamHack announced all four invited teams for the upcoming DreamHack Open Leipzig 2020 tournament, which will take off on Friday, January 24, and conclude two days later on January 26, 2020.
The Leipzig CS:GO event will mark the first DreamHack Open tournament of the year, with seven more set to follow throughout 2020. The second event is slated to take place in Anaheim later on February 21, 2020.
As it has become a tradition, DreamHack Leipzig will feature eight CS:GO teams, who will compete for the largest slice of US $100,000 prize pool, with an added award waiting the champions, who will receive a direct invite for DreamHack Masters Jönköping 2020, which is set to take place in June later this year.
Leipzig event will feature eight teams, one of which will earn a spot via North American qualifiers, two from European qualifiers, one spot is reserved for ESL Meisterschaft Winter champions, while the remaining four have been awarded to the invited teams.
Securing the first ticket for Leipzig event were Sprout, who won the ESL Meisterschaft Winter last month, while the three qualifiers spots are still open, seeing how the qualifiers have not yet begun. Both EU and NA qualifying tournaments will kick off later this weekend, on Sunday, January 12 and will end a day later, on Monday.
DreamHack just recently unveiled four invited teams, who will compete at the tournament and test their strength in a bid to secure their first paycheck of 2020. Those teams are: BIG, North, Renegades and Virtus.pro.
While they are by no means considered as one of the elite teams in the CS:GO scene, there are still loads of reasons to be excited to see them play.
BIG, alongside Sprout, will be the home favourites to claim the title this January, which is completely understandable, seeing how they are both German organizations. While that alone makes it intriguing to watch how those two teams will perform in front of the home crowd, all the spotlight will be on BIG; who have just recently signed Nils "k1to" Gruhne and Florian "syrsoN" Rische. Both are former Sprout members, which suggests, we might be seeing a bit of a rivalry between the two German outfits.
Then there are Renegades, an Australian team, mostly known for letting their former roster join 100 Thieves over in the North American scene early in October 2019. Renegades now field a completely new roster, which they acquired on December 3, 2019, from another Australian team – Grayhound. While their new line-up has not yet achieved any noteworthy results, they will have an excellent chance to do just that in Leipzig.
When it comes to teams, who are looking to impress, Virtus.pro are a prime example of a CS:GO team, which is desperate to relive their glory days. The CIS organization made a massive decision mid-December when they acquired the entire AVNAGAR roster in a bid to return to their former glory.
The said roster already participated at EPICENTER 2019 a couple of days after joining Virtus.pro, however, failed to make much noise, as they crashed out of the event in the group stage after losing to mousesports and their compatriots forZe.
Last but most certainly not least, we have North, who have taken all the spotlight in the esports scene with their rebranding, which took place this Tuesday.
https://twitter.com/TheNorthIsHere/status/1214509660272824321
The Danish organization went through one of the biggest and arguably one of the most controversial rebrandings in recent history. Without any notice to their fans, North deleted all of their social media content which includes all their tweets, YouTube videos, Facebook posts and even shut down their website for a day, which caused quite a stir in the esports community.
There were guesses whether North simply ceased to exist, however, the concerns were quickly dismissed as North re-appeared with the announcement of a rebranding, and with it unveiled their new logo, changes to their esports teams and most importantly their plans for the future.
Whether their unorthodox rebranding was a smart move and whether their new logo is better compared to their old one is up to debate, however, we can't help but wonder why they decided to remove all the memories which date back to January 2017. Their new plans for the future are surely highly optimistic and very promising, considering they have announced their ultimate goal is to become the best and the biggest Scandinavian esports organization but we can't help but feel like North's rebranding went south – no pun intended.
Among other announcements, North also revealed the re-signing of Markus "Kjaerbye" Kjærbye, who announced he will extend his stay with the organization. That alone is a huge announcement, considering Kjaerbye is arguably the best player in the team, as he is, at the end of the day, former Astralis member and a 2017 ELEAGUE Major champion and MVP.
Whether North will manage to deliver to the hype they caused with the rebranding is anyone's guess, yet we can be sure they will travel to Leipzig with massive expectations on their shoulders, as they look to secure yet another DreamHack Open event, after winning the last tournament of 2019 – DreamHack Sevilla.
