FunPlus Phoenix will expand into CS:GO with Heroic’s roster
A Chinese esports organisation, FunPlus Phoenix, have announced their expansion into the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive esports scene with the acquisition of Heroic's roster.
FunPlus Phoenix are mostly known for their League of Legends squad, which hoisted the Summoner's Cup at 2019 World Championship to establish themselves as the strongest LoL team in the world. The Chinese esports organisation also fields teams in Fortnite and PUBG and will now expand into CS:GO in a bid to expand their successful esports brand into the biggest and most popular FPS title.
Instead of fielding a Chinese roster, however, FunPlus Phoenix decided to acquire an all-Danish Heroic's roster, which fields Patrick "es3tag" Hansen, Martin "stavn" Lund, Johannes "B0RUP" Borup, Casper "cadiaN" Møller, captain Marco "Snappi" Pfeiffer and coach Frederik "LOMME" Nielsen.
The acquisition of the Danish CS:GO team, however, makes a lot of sense. While there are plenty of Chinese CS:GO teams, none compare to the European and North American talent, and especially to the Danish teams. Denmark is widely regarded as the country, which fosters some of the biggest esports talents in the world, including the whole Astralis CS:GO roster, League of Legends stars in G2's Rasmus "Caps" Winther, Martin "Wunder" Hansen and ex-Fnatic member Mads "Broxah" Brock-Pedersen, TSM co-owner Søren "Bjergsen" Bjerg, the best-paid esports player and Dota2 legend Johan "N0tail" Sundstein, as well as Rainbow Six Siege star Niclas "Pengu" Mouritzen to name a few.
Heroic's roster is currently ranked 14th in the world and although the team has experienced a turbulent period over the last couple of months, Heroic have been inside the top 15 in the world since January, shortly after they finished third at EPICENTER 2019.
Other than their third-place finish at EPICENTER, Heroic also won DreamHack Open Atlanta 2019, pocketed silver at WESG 2019 North Europe and since the turn of the year won GG.BET Winter Cup, finished third at DreamHack Open Leipzig 2020, but have since dipped in form, as they finished seventh-eighth at ICE Challenge 2020 and ninth-12th at Europe Minor Championship – Rio 2020: Closed Qualifier.
With Heroic's roster, FunPlush Phoenix will also be moving to FLASHPOINT. FLASHPOINT Season 1 is set to kick off later this week, where Heroic will play their first games on March 17, 2020.
That said, it was earlier reported that FLASHPOINT is having difficulties finding teams to complete its line-up of founding 10 teams. However, there are rumours that organisers handed invites out to Chaos and HAVU, both of whom were in attendance at the FLASHPOINT Global Qualifier. The founding teams of FLASHPOINT include Gen. G Esports, Cloud9, MiBR, Dignitas, c0ntact Gaming, and MAD Lions.
By moving to FunPlus Phoenix and transitioning to FLASHPOINT, it remains unclear what will happen with Heroic's ESL Pro League spot, seeing how the team won't be able to participate in both leagues.
FLASHPOINT's group selection will be held on March 12 at 21:00 CET and will see teams draw themselves into groups – a new feature which will be implemented at FLASHPOINT.
FunPlus Phoenix CS:GO roster is:
Patrick "es3tag" Hansen
Martin "stavn" Lund
Johannes "b0RUP" Borup
Marco "Snappi" Pfeiffer
Casper "cadiaN" Møller
Frederik "LOMME" Nielsen –coach
