All of the seven invites have been confirmed for this years IEM Sydney. Returning champions and some new faces will be heading down to Australia in May.
On Wednesday, we reviewed the first four invites for Intel Extreme Masters Sydney. As of yesterday we now have the last three confirmed with the final invite going to Fnatic.
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Cloud 9, NaVi and Fnatic will be joining SK, FaZe, Renegades and mousesports in Sydney later this year. The GG Origin Qualifier spot will go to one of the European teams currently in the group stages. North American and remaining European teams will get one spot each for their region. North, Astralis and OpTiC, who attended last year, have missed out on invites for this year. North and Astralis could take the European Qualifier spot, while OpTiC could also score the North American spot. The Asian Closed Qualifiers will be held on April 4th - 11th and the top three teams will qualify. Oceanic Closed Qualifiers will also get three spots and will run from the 14th - 17th of April. The current attendees list looks like this:
Who will look to even up the Intel Grand Slam wins with SK?
The Intel Grand Slam rewards an extra $1 million to the team that can win four out of the ten ESL or Dreamhack Premier events. After Fnatic's most recent win at IEM Katowice, there are multiple teams one win away from evening SK's lead. SK is currently on two wins after securing both ESL One: Cologne and ESL Pro League Season 6 in 2017. Of those attending IEM Sydney, FaZe and Fnatic have the chance to catch them. FaZe won ESL One: New York in 2017 which puts them even with Fnatic on one win each. Teams still have an opportunity before IEM Sydney to get another win under their belt at DreamHack Masters Marseille 2018.
What do you get when you put s1mple, coldzera, FalleN, fer and flamie together?
It was announced that TACO had left the SK lineup after two years of playing for the Brazilian team. Rumors then started popping up that SK were in talks with NaVi over acquiring s1mple and flamie. Unfortunately it wasn't meant to be as NaVi confirmed s1mple and flamie would be staying with the Ukrainian team. The Brazilian/CIS mashup team would have had a lot of fire power, should the talks have been successful, but too many star players is not always a good thing. This leaves SK down a player ahead of Sydney with boltz still apart of the team, on loan from Immortals.
Did your favourite team get one of the last invites? Are you still hoping they will qualify for their respective region? Let us know who you are rooting for and don't forget to buy tickets.
Sarah Thomas @kaida
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