Psyonix announced Rocket League Spring Series online tournament
Psyonix announced an online format for its Rocket League competition, in a bid to keep the show going amid the COVID-19 outbreak, which has put most of the esports scene at a halt or ushered online leagues.
Following the announcement of the cancellation of Rocket League Season 9 World Championship, the Rocket League community was left in dark in regards of the future of its competitive scene, up until this Sunday, March 29, when Psyonix announced an online Rocket League competition, which is set to begin in April and US $300,000 in prize pool.
The newly announced RL competition, dubbed Rocket League Spring Series is a series of tournaments, which will include teams from four major RLCS regions: Europe, North America Oceania and South America. Each region will have its own open qualifiers tournament, featuring only the best RLCS teams in the world who will duke it out for the spot at the main event.
The Online qualifiers will begin in April with South American qualifiers, followed by North American, Oceanic and European qualifiers. Each region will also host its own tournament, as to prevent any connectivity issues that come with online tournaments.
Dates for each tournament and open qualifiers:
Open qualifiers:
- South America: Open Qualifiers on April 14-15
- North America: Open Qualifiers on April 21-22
- Oceania: Open Qualifiers on April 28-29
- Europe: Open Qualifiers on May 5-6
Spring Series:
- South America: Spring Series on April 18-19
- North America: Spring Series on April 25-26
- Oceania: Spring Series on May 2-3
- Europe: Spring Series on May 9-10
The idea behind Rocket League Spring Series is to award teams that would have made it to the cancelled World Championship, while also maintaining the openness that has been a hallmark of competitive Rocket League since its inception.
Format:
- Eight teams will compete in each tournament.
- Top four teams from each region0s Season 9 Regional Championship will automatically qualify and have preferential seeding.
- The remaining four spots will be filled by teams who will fight their way through Open Qualifiers, held before each regional tournament.
- Each tournament will feature a double-elimination bracket played out over two days of RL action.
- All fixtures will be played as best-of-five (Bo5), except for the Loser's Bracket Finals, Winner's Bracket Finals and the Grand finals, which will be played as Bo7.
Prize pool:
- Europe: $125,000
- North America: $125,000
- Oceania: $50,000
- South America: $50,000
The Rocket League Spring Series, however, is only one of many online tournaments Psyonix is working on since the developers decided to start providing top-tier online regional tournaments in a bid to keep the Rocket League's competitive scene alive and running during the ongoing pandemic, which at the time of writing already has well over 700,000 confirmed cases worldwide.
The Spring Series will also be a testing ground for further events like it, meaning we could be expecting some experimental stuff during the broadcast as well as in the format of the competition itself.
The Rocket League Spring Series will be streamed at the same platforms where the fans usually got to watch Rocket League esports action, meaning the broadcasts will be available at both official Rocket League Twitch and YouTube channels. The start times for each tournament will however differ.
Rocket League Spring Series Broadcast dates and time:
- South America: April 18-19, show begins at 7:30 a.m. PDT (2:30 p.m. UTC) each day
- North America: April 25-26, show begins at 11:30 a.m. PDT (6:30 p.m. UTC) each day
- Oceania: May 2-3, show begins at 6:30 p.m. PDT (1:30 a.m. UTC) each day
- Europe: May 9-10, show begins at 8:30 a.m. PDT (3:30 p.m. UTC) each day
