Australia & New Zealand's premier CS:GO league will qualify one team into Intel® Extreme Masters Sydney 2019 Today we are excited to announce more details around the second Intel® Extreme Masters Sydney qualification spot for the ANZ region. This year, an increased focus on promoting strong local talent across Australia & New Zealand will see new opportunities for teams competing in the ESL AU & NZ Championships, the first of which being the IEM Sydney Derby - a 4-team CS:GO qualifier that will seed one team directly into the Intel® Extreme Masters Sydney 2019 Group Stages. Operating as a four-team single elimination competition, the leading team in each group respectively will take on the opposing team's second ranked team. This opening round will be on a best-of-three basis. The championship match will be where everything is on the line - a best-of-five series with the winner taking home a group stage ticket to the Intel® Extreme Masters Sydney. Qualification Bracket Format “With the help of the ESL AU & NZ Championships, the local Counter-Strike scene in ANZ has reached a point where our teams can go toe-to-toe with some of the world’s best” said Kamine Naidoo, Product Manager ESL Australia. “The…

The road to the Qudos Bank Arena begins with the open and closed qualifiers for IEM Sydney 2019. Here are all the important dates aspiring teams need to consider if they wish to join the elite in Australia next May. Due to an internal error, we initially announced that IEM Sydney 2019 would consist of eight invited teams and eight qualifiers (three of them from Oceania). We apologize for any inconveniences caused by this and would like to rectify Oceania's allotment to two spots, one of them from the online qualifier. We will soon announce some very exciting details relating to Oceania's second qualifier spot.This is how each regional qualifier will play out: Europe Awarding: 1 slot into the IEM Sydney 2019 Group Stage. Open qualifier: Unlimited Single Elimination bo1 bracket with bo3 decider matches. Two teams advance to the closed qualifier from each open qualifier. #1: January 30-31, starts at 18h00 CET  - Click here to sign up #2: February 2-3, starts at 18h00 CET - Click here to sign up Closed qualifier: Eight teams (four from open qualifiers, four invites) in a double elimination bo3 bracket with a bo5 final. One team qualifies for the IEM Sydney 2019…