HellRaisers rise up to replace Liquid at StarSeries i-League Season 7
Liquid will not be attending StarSeries i-League Season 7 in Shanghai, the tournament organizer has announced. Replacing them will be HellRaisers, who have attended the past five seasons of StarLadder's bi-annual event.
The announcement follows after Liquid's recent win at iBUYPOWER Masters 2019, where they finally triumphed over Astralis in series play for the first time since ESL One New York 2017. Having held the spot as the second best team in the world for some time, Liquid's calendar for 2019 is seemingly packed tight, with the team withdrawing from the tournament to give themselves ample downtime.
With ESL Pro League Season 9 also making the transition to LAN and Astralis demostrating the benefits of skipping events throughout 2018, more and more teams may begin to hand-pick their events over the calendar year. StarSeries Season 7 falls in between the two currently-announced BLAST Pro Series events in São Paulo and Miami, with MIBR already having received an invite to their home event.
The complete team list for StarSeries i-League Season 7 now looks as follows:
 BIG |
 CyberZen |
 ENCE |
 FaZe |
 fnatic |
 HellRaisers |
 MIBR |
mousesports |
 Natus Vincere |
NiP |
 North |
 NRG |
| Rogue |
 Spirit |
| TYLOO |
ex-Wild |
StarSeries i-League Season 7 is set to run from March 30th - April 7th in Shanghai, China, and will have $500,000 on offer. The tournament will also return to using a best-of-three Swiss system for its group stage, a format which was last used during Season 5 of the event at the start of 2018.
