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The Finnish esports tournament organizer announced the return of LAN Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament, with Elisa Invitational 2021 Winter.
The tournament will take place at Tampere Exhibition and Sports Centre in Finland, on March 2022, with a $100,000 prize pool and eight teams in attendance.
Elisa Invitational Returns To LAN
Elisa Esports announced the Elisa Invitational 2021 Winter CS:GO esports tournament on Tuesday, November 9, unveiling the dates, format, and prize pool for the event. As revealed, the competition will be held on LAN at Tampere Exhibition and Sports Centre in Tampere, Finland, marking the first Elisa-organized tournament to take place offline.
“We are extremely proud of our domestic esports expertise and our long co-operation with LanTrek,” said Teemu Koski, Head of Elisa Esports.
“It is great that together we can bring a top international tournament to Finland, and enable our fans to enjoy world-class CS:GO content live.”
” This is a great demonstration of the long-term and bold co-operation we have done for Finnish spectators and players with Elisa Esports in recent years,” added Juha-Matti Haapala, Chairman of LanTrek.
“After a challenging COVID-19 year, we will finally be able to bring a top international tournament in front of live audiences to the LanTrek event in Tampere.”
Elisa Esports has yet to reveal which teams will receive direct invites for the competition. However, we do know that the tournament will take place on March 3-5, with a $100,000 prize pool and eight CS:GO teams in attendance.
The tournament is a part of the Champion of Champions 2021/22 tour, which was announced in April 2021. The tour has over $2.7 million in prize pool across all of its competitions, spread across 2021 and 2022.
The Winter event will be one of the Elisa qualifying events leading into the $250,000 Elisa Masters tournament, slated for 2022. The latter event will serve as a gateway into the season-culminating Elisa Champion of Champions.
Elisa Invitational 2021 Winter Format
The Elisa Invitational 2021 Winter will feature eight teams, including four invited teams and four CS:GO esports squads, who will earn their spot at the tournament through the Nordic qualifiers. The qualifying tournament will take place in Norway, Sweden, and Finland from November 8-14.
As revealed by Elisa Esports, the initial plan was also to host Danish qualifiers; unfortunately, the latter had to be canceled due to organizational issues. This means that we might not see a single Danish CS:GO team at the event, assuming Elisa won’t hand a direct invite to any of them.
The eight teams attending Elisa Invitational 2021 Winter will be separated into two double-elimination groups. There, all opening and winners’ matches will be played as best-of-one, while the elimination and decider matches will be played as best-of-three.
The top two teams from each group will advance into the playoffs, where a standard single-elimination bracket will be in place. All playoffs matches will be played as best-of-three, including the grand finals, scheduled for Saturday, March 5.
The tournament will feature a $100,000 prize pool, following the trend of the previous Elisa Esports-organized events. The tournament organizers have yet to unveil how the prize pool will be distributed, but according to past events, the winners are expected to take home at least $50,000.
Beyond collecting the lion’s share of the $100,000 prize pool, the Elisa Invitational 2021 Winter winners will also receive a ticket for the Masters competition. The latter will reward entrance to the Champion Of Champions tournament.
Elisa Invitational 2021 Winter will mark Elisa’s first LAN tournament of the year. It will be held at Tampere Exhibition and Sports Centre during the Finnish gaming event, LanTrek 2022.
As announced by Elisa Esports, the tournament will allow up to 1,000 spectators.