With the Impact League, the ESL organised a worldwide CS:GO tournament for female teams. At the weekend, the grand finale took place at DreamHack in Dallas.
Women in eSports are becoming more and more commonplace. Success stories like that of FIFA player Fabienne Morlok or her Brazilian colleague ‘Teca’ are no longer isolated incidents. In other games, too, there is now a large female player community from which talented female players regularly emerge for a professional career.
ESL takes step towards diversification
There have been few places for them to go in CS:GO so far, which is why ESL decided to create a global competition just for female teams. With the Impact League pilot project, the eSports organisation set itself the goal of “taking an important step towards a more diverse CS:GO ecosystem”.
This step culminated last weekend at DreamHack in Dallas. In the final round, eight teams competed that had previously qualified for the deciding round via Regional Seasons and Wildcards.
After a group phase, the best four teams went into the play-offs, in which the European team Nigma Galaxy and FURIA from Brazil finally prevailed.
Nigma Galaxy turn the final around
In the best-of-three of the final, the Brazilians then managed their first win: on the “Mirage” map, FURIA recorded a narrow 16:14 and took the lead. However, Nigma Galaxy kept their cool and fought back with a clear 16:5 on “Vertigo”.
The decision thus fell in the final third match on “Overpass”, where the players from Eastern Europe and Portugal once again proved ice-cold and secured the first ESL Impact League title with a commanding 16:7.
