ESL reveals 2020 Rio Minor closed qualifier invited teams

Jan 31, 2020

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ESL released the list invitees for the closed qualifiers for the ESL One Rio Minor today. These invited teams will face those that qualify through the open qualifiers for a spot in the Valve-sponsored tournament Minors.

The closed qualifiers are the first list of invites that are based on ESL’s controversial ranking system that operates independently from HLTV’s World Rankings. For ESL’s Pro Tour, the tournament organizer has created its own list, separate from the current HLTV standard.

The tournament organizer has invited teams from all major regions, but not all regions are equal in the number of teams invited. North America, Europe, and the CIS regions each feature eight invited teams. South America, Oceania, East Asia, China, SEA, and the ME regions have four invited teams each.

Cloud9, Fnatic headline ESL One Rio Minor Closed Qualifier list

The lists include some notable names like Cloud9 and Fnatic, both of which failed to make last year’s StarLadder Berlin Major.

The closed qualifiers for North America, Europe, and the CIS region will fill their final slots with eight teams from the open qualifiers. The dates for the three largest open qualifiers are as follows:

Europe: January 31 to February 1, February 4-5, February 8-9, February 12-13
North America: January 31 to February 1, February 4-5, February 8-9, February 12-13
CIS: February 2-3, February 6-7, February 10-11, February 14-15

More information on both the open and closed qualifier process can be found on ESL’s official blog on the topic.

Here’s the list of the teams invited by ESL to the closed qualifier portion of the tournament:

Europe