NA’VI decline Global Grand Masters invite

Announced only last week, the first edition of Global Grand Masters suffered a change to their directly invited teams list. Natus Vincere’s schedule for the upcoming two months will prevent them from playing at ProDota’s first large tournament.

Team Empire, who were initially invited to play in the closed qualifiers for the $50,000 online competition, will replace the Ukrainians while the newly returned FlipSid3 Tactics squad is offered Secret's spot in the online qualifiers.

Global Grand Masters directly invited teams:

Team Empire
Team Liquid
Alliance
Vega Squadron

GosuGamers reached out to NA’VI for a statement regarding their decision to withdraw from the tournament and according to their manager, the team’s schedule for June and July is too packed to leave room for Global Grand Masters:

Unfortunately we have to decline GGM’s invite as we already have a certain plan for the upcoming tournaments and a fixed schedule for bootcamps until end of July. We tried to find a way to participate but it simply doesn’t fit our program. ” - Igor 'caff' Sydorenko - Natus Vincere Manager.

Global Grand Masters playoffs are scheduled to take place from 3rd to 10th of July with eight teams battling in a double elimination playoff bracket. In just three weeks, closed qualifiers will commence, on June 15th with eight teams split into two groups. They will be playing in a Round Robin format, two game series with the top two teams from each group advancing into the playoffs.

Global Grand Masters closed qualifiers invited teams:

FlipSid3 Tactics
Team Spirit
Ad Finem
Kaipi
Power Rangers
Virtus.Pro
Polarity
No Diggity