North American teams placed in IEM Sydney Groups
The start of next month will see international CS:GO return to Australia, with IEM Sydney hitting the country's most populous city. May 1st-6th will see four North American-based teams take on various teams who compete on the world's stage and domestically in Australia.
Thanks to ESL's standarized tournament format, being implemented in all but ESL One Belo Horizonte, the competition will start off with two eight-team GSL-style groups before moving onto the playoffs. The two groups are as follows:
| Group A | Group B |
|---|---|
 FaZe |
mousesports |
 Space Soldiers |
 Astralis |
 Renegades |
 NRG |
| Cloud9 |
 Natus Vincere |
 SK |
 Fnatic |
 TyLoo |
 B.O.O.T-d[S] |
| ORDER |
 MVP PK |
| Grayhound |
Chiefs |
Looking on the outside of it, the groups seem fairly lopsided, with Group A holding four of the seven invited teams to the event. By virtue of this, all of the invited North American-based sides reside in Group A, with just NRG fighting it alone in Group B.
Although the schedule is yet to be released, we know what the first round of games are set to be, which are:
| Group A | |
| FaZe |
vs. ORDER |
| Space Soldiers |
vs. Renegades |
| Cloud9 |
vs. Grayhound |
| SK |
vs. TyLoo |
| Group B | |
| mousesports |
vs. B.O.O.T-d[S] |
| NRG |
vs. Astralis |
| Natus Vincere |
vs. MVP PK |
| Chiefs |
vs. Fnatic |
The first game at IEM Sydney will kick-off at 10pm EDT on April 30th, before continuing onto 5am EDT the following day.
