Today, April 4th the regional qualifiers for ESL One Frankfurt 2016 will commence. First to dispute the available spots for the LAN playoffs is Europe.
It seems that ESL chose to stick to their previous season regional qualifiers format as they put up for grabs three spots for the European squads. No information has been released yet about the SEA and China regional qualifier stage but last year’s edition had only one spot available for these regions while Western Dota was represented at the LAN event only by Evil Geniuses who had been directly invited.
With that being said let’s take a look at the double elimination bracket for Europe where 12 teams will play until the 11th of April to decide the top three that will secure a trip to Frankfurt this summer.
As the graphics are showing, four teams are starting the competition from quarterfinals seats. This happens because of the two tiers of invites that ESL likes to use for the closed qualifier round.
Na’Vi, Virtus.Pro, Team Spirit and Vega Squadron have received tier one invites while Polarity, No Diggity, Alternate aTTaX and Ad Finem have been granted with tier two invites and will start from the first round of the upper bracket.
From the other four teams remaining in the first round of the upper bracket, three have earned their spot via open qualifiers, namely Team Empire, Pries Gaming and Fantastic Five. Danish Bears are the winners of the Go4Dota 2 Europe Monthly Final March 2016 online tournament that had $350 as a prize for the first place finishers and a guaranteed spot into the main qualifiers for ESL One Frankfurt 2016.
Although no information has been given about the invited teams for the other regional qualifiers, we know the names of the squads that made it in from the SEA open qualifiers: Orange.Taring, Rave, Da Teletubbies and Acion Arena. The SEA main qualifiers will start on April 7th with the ending on April 12th.
ESL One Frankfurt 2016 is set to take place on Commerzbank Arena between 18-19th of June and will feature a $250,000 starting prize pool. For those planning to attend the live event, the tickets have been already put on sale with prices ranging from €29 for a standard two days access to €2,999 for an Aegis Experience. More information on ticket sales can be found here.
