CS:GO IEM Rio Major 2022 – Start of the Champions Stage [E-Sports]

All eyes on Rio de Janeiro: With the Champions Stage, the Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) 2022 in Rio are entering the hot phase. Eight CS:GO teams will compete in the KO phase for a total of $1.2 million in prize money – surprisingly the defending champion Faze Clan is no longer there, who were already eliminated in the Challenger Stage and thus a historically poor performance ” achieved”. Never before has a Major winner – in the case of Faze they won the Major in Antwerp – been eliminated in the first round of the following tournament.

From a German point of view, MOUZ is one team that has made it into the Champions Stage of the IEM Rio Major 2022, albeit only very narrowly. Only in the all-important fifth round of the Legends Stage was the newly formed CS:GO roster able to beat the Finnish team ENCE 2-1. BIG, on the other hand, lost out in the final round against fellow favorites Natus Vincere and, like Sprout, has to say goodbye to the last major tournament of the year – the latter started with high hopes of progressing, but had already given up in the fourth elimination round have to.

CS:GO IEM Rio Major 2022 Champions Stage – Teams, Schedule, Format

In contrast to the completed Challenger or Legends Stage, the final rounds in the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament rely on a classic knockout system. However, the quarter-final matches are not drawn, but are based on the results of the previous rounds, resulting in the following schedule:

The IEM Rio Major 2022 Champions Stage will start on November 10th. All matches will be played in a best-of-three format – accordingly, two won maps are required to advance to the next final round. The schedule is tight: The semi-finals continue on November 12, before the final is held the following day on November 13 in the completely sold-out Jeunesse Arena. The organizers themselves have for the first time even a fan festival including public viewing set up in front of the arena – according to their own statements, here more than 100,000 live viewers expected. All games will be broadcast as usual on the ESL official twitch channel.