FiReSPORTS has announced that it has struck a partnership with BLAST ahead of the launch of its next project, a Latin American league called FiRe League with a $141,000 prize pool. In addition to prize money, the competing teams will also vie for a spot at BLAST Premier Fall 2020 Showdown, scheduled for late November.
The FiRe League will kick off in mid-September with a minimum of 24 teams across three regions: North (based in Mexico and including several Caribbean countries), Central (based in Colombia and including Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela, and Panama) and South (based in Argentina and including Chile, Uruguay, Bolivia, and Paraguay). All sub-regions will have $18,000 in prize money and $6,000 in “social performance” bonuses that will be based on fan engagement on social media.
The FiRe League will run from September until December
Halfway through the season, the table-toppers in the three sub-regions and one team decided by a fan vote will face off in a quadrangular tournament to determine the team that will attend the BLAST Premier Fall Showdown, which will be held from November 25-29 and will have $325,000 and two spots at the Fall Finals on the line.
“There is a highly passionate and thriving CS:GO community in Latin America, we are really excited to be able team up with FiReSPORTS to offer the winning team an opportunity to play in the BLAST Premier Fall Showdown later this year,” BLAST CEO Robbie Douek told HLTV.org. “We look forward to watching some of the best talent in this region go head-to-head and will welcome the eventual winner to our Fall Showdown where they can test themselves against the world’s top Counter-Strike teams on a global stage.”
The top two teams from the South sub-region and the winners of the Central and North divisions will lock horns at the $40,000 Regional Finals, which will be held at the Movistar Arena, in Buenos Aires, on December 5. The following day, the two grand finalists will participate in the FiRe League Global Final, a $70,000 tournament that will also feature one team from Brazil and one from Spain.
“Latin America has the same potential as the rest of the world, but no one has dared to bet on this region with this strength,” FiReSPORTS’s Jerónimo Figueroa Reyes told Infobae. “With this we also want to help brands to acknowledge the Latin American circuit and to value it as they do the rest of the regions.”
The open qualifiers for the three sub-regions will be held in August, with more information to be announced in the coming weeks by FiReSPORTS.
Below you can find the teams that have been invited to compete in the South division, which is likely to be expanded to as many as 12 teams:
Source: https://www.hltv.org/news/29981/firesports-partners-with-blast-for-141000-fire-league
