IEM returns to Sydney
ESL announced today that the unannounced Intel Extreme Masters Fall event will be happening in Sydney for the first time since 2019. The competition will start on the 16th of October and will end on the 22nd of the same month.
The last time Sydney hosted an IEM event, Liquid won it with ease, only dropping two maps throughout the whole competition. At the time, Jake "Stewie2K" Yip was still with the team, as well as Russel "Twistzz" Van Dulken, who was crowned the MVP of IEM Sydney 2019.
The 16 teams to go to Sydney will include six partner teams, four invited teams based on their ESL World Ranking, a local hero, and five teams from regional qualifiers. North America, Oceania, and Asia will get one spot each through the qualifier, while Europe will get two spots.
The regional qualifiers will happen in two phases, the first being the two open qualifiers, whose winners will clinch their presence in the closed qualifier, alongside other two teams, that got there by invitation. Then, only the winner of the closed qualifier will play in Sydney. The North American open qualifiers will happen from August 9th-10th, and August 11th-12th, with the closed qualifier happening from August 24th-25th.
IEM Sydney will be hosted by SXSW Sydney and will be running alongside the Tech & Innovation Expo, with the playoffs being set to be played in the Aware Super Theatre, a venue with a capacity to hold 9,000 people.
IEM Sydney is one of the events that the ESL Pro Tour changes will affect, as the grand finals of the event will not be a BO5, but a BO3 instead. The competition will have a prize pool of $250,000.
