ESL officially announces IEM Rio, the second Major of 2022
Today, ESL announced the Intel Extreme Masters Rio CS:GO Major Championship which will be the first Major held in Brazil and first held in the Western Hemisphere since the ELEAGUE Boston 2018 Major Championship. The event begins October 31 and will last through November 13th, where the playoffs will be hosted in the Jeunesse Arena.
ESL first showed their intent to host a Major in Brazil in December of 2019 when the tournament organizer announced that it was set to host ESL One Rio in May of 2020. Despite hosting both a significantly large and passionate fanbase, Brazil has suffered from a lack of tier-one international events being hosted in the region. The last international event in the country was Dreamhack Open Rio in 2019, but Brazil also hosted Blast São Paulo in the same year, ESL One Belo Horizonte in 2018 and EPL Season 4 Finals in 2016.
With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in the early portion of 2020, it quickly became apparent that holding the ESL One Rio event in May of that year would simply not be feasible. As such, ESL announced that the Major would be moved back to November of that year, meaning only one Major would be played during the year.
Like the previous qualification nomenclature, the run-up to the event will be called the "IEM Road to Rio" which is not to be confused with the ESL One: Road to Rio that was hosted online during 2020. The swiss-system will make its return once again to the main event, which has been under intense scrutiny in recent weeks due to the implementation of the "Buchholz Scoring" system. It is unclear if that scoring system will return for this Major.
Ulirch Schulze, Senior Vice-President of Product Management at ESL Gaming said in a press release;
"We couldn’t be more excited to finally bring the Major to Rio de Janeiro. The ever-growing and passionate Brazilian esports community is amazing and for the past couple of years we have been hoping to provide the fans with one of the greatest esports experiences ever. Now the time is finally here and we can’t wait for the world’s best CS:GO teams to ultimately enter the Jeunesse Arena and have it shake to its foundations from the excitement from Brazil and beyond."
Additionally, Carlos Augusto Buarque, marketing director at Intel Brazil commented;
"Intel is very proud to bring Intel Extreme Masters back to Brazil – and this time as a CS:GO Major so our local gaming community can experience firsthand one of the top CS:GO tournaments in the world. Gaming happens with Intel, and we have increasingly sought to offer the best technologies to gamers around the world. Brazil is one of Intel’s key markets in the world and when it comes to gaming, 3 out of 4 Brazilians play electronic games, so being part of the organization of an event as big as this one is very important for us."
Tickets go on sale Wednesday 03:00PM, with the lower cost price range of $18.65 for an "early bird" Thursday/Friday ticket all the way up to $414 USD for a lounge ticket. Fans who bought a ticket in 2020 and decided to keep it instead of refunding it, can use that respective ticket for the same day(s) and categories of the tournament.
