‘What’s on this week?’ is ESI’s weekly feature letting you know just what’s going on in the wonderful world of esports in the next seven days. Each week, ESI picks a selection of events and provides a brief overview of what’s going down, where it’s taking place, and how you can watch it.
We start the week off by taking a look at a double-header of sorts. One event, streamed in two locations: The World First Race, featuring Method live in Germany, with Redbull hosting Limit and Pieces live from London. We then head to the CWL Pro League which is entering its penultimate week with the playoffs play-in stage. Lastly, we go local and check in on the UKLC to see who might become this week’s Tower Champion.
Race to World First: The Eternal Palace
It’s that time again for the WoW community: a new Race to World First featuring the top guilds from around the world are now competing to become number one. This time, however, Method will be streaming its event from Germany after parting ways with Red Bull – pictured above at the previous event – while top US guild Limit and current world number one Pieces will join Red Bull in London.
Streams start on July 16th when the US servers go live, with both streams running 24/7 with multiple perspectives from guilds around the world. Both streams are packed with special guests and on-site raiders, with the Red Bull stream having two teams effectively rotate on the mainstream with an American and European guild both live from London. The previously-mentioned guilds will also be joined by top Chinese, Russian, and fellow European and US guilds during their own stream.
Streams: Method & Red Bull
Location: TakeTV, Germany & Red Bull Gaming Sphere, London, UK
Start date: 16th July
Sponsors: Secretlabs, Save the Children, Runtime
Organiser: TaKeTV & Red Bull
CWL 2019 Pro League – Playoffs Play-In
We’ve followed the 2019 season of the CWL Pro League since the start— this week we head into the penultimate event of the season, the Playoffs Play-Ins. This week sees the teams that finished 5th–8th in Division A & B receive second chance at making it to the forthcoming playoffs. The teams are Midnight Esports, Evil Geniuses, Luminosity Gaming and UYU from Division A and Team Envy, Units (former Denial), Enigma6 and Elevate from Division B.
The format for the event is a single elimination best-of-five with the two semifinals winners advancing to the playoffs to join the top 4 sides from each division. The action gets underway on July 19th with the semifinals matches taking place once the round one ties have been completed. There is no separate prize pool for this event but 22,000 pro points are on offer.
Stream: Call of Duty
Location: Columbus, USA
Date: 19th July
Sponsors: ASUS, Scuf Gaming, ASTRO Gaming, MTN DEW AMP GAME FUEL
Organiser: Activision Blizzard
Prize pool: $710,000 (£530,000)
UK League Championship – Summer Split
When the European League of Legends scene adopting franchising for 2019 and beyond, it created a lot of excitement for regional leagues across Europe. One of the standouts was the United Kingdom’s very own league. 2018 saw LVP take over from ESL UK as the organiser of the UK LoL scene and 2019 saw the start of UKLC, featuring familiar faces from UK’s past alongside new LEC team Excel and Europe’s most successful side Fnatic – both of which now field Academy rosters in the competition.
The UKLC is made up of MnM Gaming, Barrage Esports, Enclave Gaming, Diabolus, Excel UK, NVision Esports, DarkSpawn Esports, Phelan Gaming and Fnatic Rising. The competition features a ‘tower’ system, which sees the previous week’s winner taking the form as the ‘end boss’ of the following week. Week 2 saw Fnatic become the tower champion after losing in the first week to Excel; the team quickly put any doubts about their skill aside when they brushed aside the competition in the following week. The third stage of the series will see Fnatic looking to retain its place at the top heading.
Stream: LVPUK
Location: Online
Date: 17-18th July
Organisers: Riot Games & LVP
That’s a wrap on this week’s picks, be sure to check back next week for another edition of the ESI weekly picks.
We want to feature at least one smaller event each week on the ESI weekly picks. If you want an event included in a future edition, send an email to [email protected].