B8 and Eternal Fire to face off in the first round of IEM Rio 2024: European Qualifier

IEM Rio 2024 and ESL Challenger Atlanta 2024 will take place in early October 2024 and closed qualifications are coming soon. ESL have published the European Qualifier grids where teams will battle it out for important spots in the tournaments.

IEM Rio 2024: European Qualifier

From August 26-28, the IEM Rio 2024 Qualifier will be another event not to be missed. The top two teams from this tournament will earn a spot at IEM Rio. HEROIC, Team Falcons, Eternal Fire and 3DMAX received invitations to qualify, while other teams like OG, Fnatic, Cloud9 and B8 secured their spots through challenging open qualifications.

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ESL Challenger Atlanta 2024 Qualification

Starting right after the Rio qualification, another qualification for ESL Challenger Atlanta 2024 will be held on August 29-31. It will feature teams such as Aurora Gaming, Ninjas In Pyjamas, Sashi Esport, and SAW who received direct invites. However, B8, originally qualified here through open qualification as well, but withdrew due to their participation in Rio qualifying, giving way to GenOne, who will now take their place.

Schedule conflicts

Teams will not be able to play at both qualifiers because if they make it to both tournaments they will not be able to play due to scheduling issues. An ESL spokesperson commented in more detail.

Ensuring that teams don't participate in qualifying events that overlap, meaning they can't compete in both events, is not about limiting opportunities or extra work for ESL admins. It is about fairness to all teams participating in qualifying events.
If a team participated in both qualifying events, won one of them and was successful or advanced far in the other qualifying event, it would be unfair to any team they beat in a qualifying event they ended up not participating in. Simply inviting the second place team would not solve this problem.

I realize this could be a source of frustration for the affected teams, but they would be just as frustrated if they were on the other side of the situation I described above.”