dAT invited to Katowice pre-qualifier

The Ukrainian team were initially taking part in the CIS online pre-qualifier for the upcoming $250,000 major but ended up pulling out of the tournament following a scheduling conflict with StarSeries.

Andrey "⁠B1ad3⁠" Gorodenskiy blamed a miscommunication between ESL and SLTV for the situation, which left the team with no chances of qualifying for ESL One Katowice as CIS and Polish teams are barred from the last European online qualifier (due to having their own regional and national qualifiers).

To remedy the situation, ESL, which aknowledged that the scheduling conflict was caused by a "communication error", decided to invite dAT to the second European pre-qualifier, schedule for February 3-4.

"We reached out to Andrey from dAT yesterday to apologize for any trouble, and to let the team know that we will grant them an exception for the upcoming second European Qualification due to our mistake," ESL's Alexander "crtmN" Nehr said.

"The team accepted and is happy to join the qualifier to get a fair chance to play in ESL One Katowice."

dAT's B1ad3 also commented on ESL's change of heart, saying:

"We are very thankful to ESL for reconsidering their stance and granting us an exception to play in the second European Qualifier.

"We are humbled and beyond grateful of the response we received from our fans and the community as a whole.

"Your support through this entire situation was amazing and I am sure was no small part in the decision."

Meanwhile, ESL has announced that the last spot at the offline qualifier for ESL One Katowice will also come from the second European pre-qualifier, meaning that the top three sides from this tournament will advance to the event at the Angelo Hotel, from February 14-15.