ECS Season 8 Finals viewer's guide

ECS Season 8 Finals starts on Thursday so we have put together everything about the Texas event in a viewer's guide to get you ready to watch.

The tournament will be held at the Esports Stadium in Arlington, Texas from November 28-December 1 and feature eight teams, who qualified via a set of five online tournaments in Europe and North America which ran in September-October.

The participants distributed themselves into two groups in an unusual way, in which AVANGAR and Sharks were put as the first team in each group as the first two who qualified and started off a process that saw the participants determine who goes to the opposite group.

These are the groups:

The group stage will be played in a GSL system, with the opening round played in best-of-one matches and the remainder in best-of-threes, with the top two sides securing berths in the semi-finals.

A detailed schedule with opening matchups can be seen below:

Thursday, November 28
16:00 Evil Geniuses vs. AVANGAR (BO1)
17:30 Liquid vs. Ninjas in Pyjamas (BO1)
19:00 Astralis vs. Sharks (BO1)
20:30 fnatic vs. MIBR (BO1)
22:00 Group A winners' match (BO3)
01:00 Group B winners' match (BO3)

Friday, November 29
16:00 Group A elimination match (BO3)
19:00 Group B elimination match (BO3)
22:00 Group A decider match (BO3)
01:00 Group B decider match (BO3)

Saturday, November 30
19:00 Semi-final #1 (BO3)
22:00 Semi-final #2 (BO3)

Sunday, December 1
19:00 Showmatch
22:00 Grand final (BO3)

The $500,000 prize pool will be distributed as follows:

1. $225,000
2. $100,000
3-4. $50,000
5-6. $25,000
7-8. $12,500

Finally, the official stream will feature an on-air team of eight talent members, including Christopher "⁠GeT_RiGhT⁠" Alesund, who will be on the desk alongside Freya Spiers and Sean "⁠seang@res⁠" Gares:

Freya Spiers - Desk Host
Sue "⁠Smix⁠" Lee - Stage Host

Christopher "⁠GeT_RiGhT⁠" Alesund - Analyst
Sean "⁠seang@res⁠" Gares - Analyst

James "⁠BARDOLPH⁠" Bardolph - Commentator
Daniel "⁠ddk⁠" Kapadia - Commentator
Henry "⁠HenryG⁠" Greer - Commentator
Alex "⁠Machine⁠" Richardson - Commentator

Note that after consulting with the Players Association, the organizers decided that the tournament will be played on the latest update, which most notably reverted the SG553's price to $3,000, improved and cheapened the Galil and Famas, and made substantial changes to Vertigo. However, the default models will be used instead of the new Agents due to visibility issues.