Teams 16 teams | ||
Sport Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Location Katowice, Silesian Voivodeship, Poland Dates March 12, 2015–March 15, 2015 Administrator(s) Electronic Sports League (ESL) Tournament format(s) 16 team round-robin group stage
Eight team single-elimination playoff | ||
Electronic Sports League One Katowice 2015, known as ESL One Katowice 2015 for short, was a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) Major tournament that was from March 12-15, 2015 at the Spodek Arena in Katowice, Silesian Voivodeship, Poland. It was the first CS:GO Major of 2015. It was organized by Electronic Sports League with sponsorship from Valve Corporation. The tournament had a total prize pool of $250,000 USD.
Contents
A 16 team qualifier was held with the top 8 teams qualifying for ESL One Katowice.
Fnatic was the winner of the event after beating Ninjas in Pyjamas 2-1 in the finals.
The tournament was livestreamed on the official ESL twitch.tv channel and on the CS:GO in-game match viewing client. Over 1 million concurrent viewers watched the grand finals, breaking the record for a CS:GO event.
Cloud9 was alleged to have been on Adderall during the duration of the tournament.
The first, round-robin group stage consisted of 16 teams in four groups. For the next stage the top two teams in each group were then seeded into a single-elimination bracket.
Format
The top eight teams of the DreamHack Winter 2014 qualified as Legends. Eight teams from the offline Qualifier tournament also participated in the tournament
Teams will be split up into four groups. All group matches are best of 1. The highest seed will play the lowest seed in each group and the second and third seeds will play against each other. The winner of those two matches will play to determine which team moves on to the Playoffs; the loser of that match will play another match against the winner of the two losing teams. The loser of the lower match is eliminated from the tournament. The last two teams will play each other and the winner of that match moves on to the playoffs.
The playoffs bracket consists of eight teams, two from each group. All of these matches are a best of three, single elimination format. Teams advance in the bracket until a winner is decided.
Main Qualifier
In both European qualifiers, 64 teams played in a single elimination, best of one tournament. Two teams from each qualifier moved on to the main qualifier. The North American qualifier featured 8 teams that played in a single elimination bracket and one team moved on to the main qualifier. In the CIS qualifier, eight teams played in a double elimination, best of one bracket. Lastly, in the Polish qualifier, two teams played in a best of three series.
The teams were separated into two groups of 8. The teams played in a double-elimination, best of one bracket. Four teams from each group, two from the winner's bracket and two from the loser's bracket, move on the the major.
1Four of the five players from Team iBUYPOWER were banned by Valve for their parts in the North American match fixing scandal. In a game with NetCodeGuides.com, the players intentionally threw a game. CSGO personality and journalist Richard Lewis exposed the scandal that in exchange of a NetCodeGuides.com win, iBUYPOWER players would receive skins. Duc "cud" Pham, Derek "dboorN" Boorn, and Casey "caseyfoster" Foster, authority figures of NetCodeGuides.com, were banned by Valve. In addition, Sam "DaZeD" Marine, Keven "AZK" Larivière, Joshua "steel" Nissan, and Braxton "swag" Pierce were banned from all Valve-sponsored events. The remaining member of iBUYPOWER, Tyler "Skadoodle" Latham, was not banned since he was the only player who did not receive anything, thus making evidence against him inconclusive. The bans were officially made permanent on January 5, 2016. Richard Lewis later wrote an open letter to Valve, claiming the bans were too harsh. steel and DaZeD would later turn to full time streaming; in addition, DaZeD was invited to commentate at ESL Pro League Seasons 4 and 5 and was an analyst at Intel Extreme Masters Season XI Oakland. AZK became a professional Overwatch player for Team Liquid, and swag was hired by Cloud9 to become its CSGO analyst.
2The Polish roster of ESC Gaming was picked up by Gamers2. ESC Gaming would go on ti pick up a Danish roster.
Broadcast Talent
Hosts
Analysts
Commentators
Observers
Teams
Prior to the major, changes took place.
Yegor "markeloff" Markelov and Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev depart from HellRaisers. s1mple was replaced by Dauren "AdreN" Kystaubayev. Later, HellRaisers announces the signing of Egor "flamie" Vasilyev to fill up the remaining spot on the roster.
PENTA Sports adds Tobias "Troubley" Tabbert from mousesports and Johannes "nex" Maget from Planetkey Dynamics to its roster. Robin "r0bs3n" Stephan and Felix "fel1x" Zech were out of the roster.
Team EnVyUs acquires the full roster of Team LDLC.com.
Team Dignitas releases Henrik "FeTiSh" Christensen and signs Finn "karrigan" Andersen as the in game leader. Roughly two months later, the roster is acquired by Team SoloMid.
The players of NetCodeGuides.com disbands from its organization. Counter Logic Gaming then signs four of the five players (Josh "jdm64" Marzano was the exception) and Peter "ptr" Gurney to its roster.
Flipsid3 Tactics releases its Swedish and Bosnian roster and signs the roster of dAT Team. s1mple later left the team and the team signs Vadim "DavCost" Vasilyev.