IEM Katowice 2021 to be played without an audience

14-12-2020 15:57

The $1 million event is still planned as a LAN competition, hosted at a location in Europe.

ESL has confirmed that their first ESL Pro Tour Masters Championship event of next year, IEM Katowice 2021, won't be played out in a crowd-filled arena due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The tournament organizer still plans to host the tournament, scheduled for February 16-28, as an "in-person competition" which will take place at an undisclosed location in Europe. However, ESL will revert to online play instead "should COVID-19 remain a major barrier to the safety of our talent, players and staff".

There will be no CS:GO action in the Spodek Arena this year

Last year's edition of IEM Katowice was the first CS:GO event to be affected by the coronavirus pandemic, seeing the playoffs of the tournament played out in an empty arena, where Natus Vincere lifted the trophy. Since then, ESL has hoped to return to LAN with ESL One Cologne and the IEM Global Challenge, but both events were ultimately reverted to online play.

IEM Katowice 2021 is a 24-team event with a $1,000,000 prize pool, which will award an Intel Grand Slam point and take place in the second part of February. Things will kick off with a play-in tournament (16-17 February), followed by a group stage (18-21 February), and finally, the playoffs (26-28 February), as the dates of the tournament remain unchanged.

Through the ESL Pro Tour points system and feeder tournaments, the following teams have been confirmed for the event:

Group stage:

Play-In:

Wildcard invite #2

Wildcard invite #4

Wildcard invite #6

Liquid

Complexity

Renegades

Wildcard invite #1

Wildcard invite #3

Wildcard invite #5

EPEC Winter 2020

expected

2020-12-14 15:58

23 replies

unfortunate but at least it's LAN

2020-12-14 16:00

21 replies

+1 I wonder why this has not happened earlier. Everyone is bootcamping in EU anyways

2020-12-14 16:03

10 replies

2020-12-14 16:04

1 reply

It would be shifted to online anyway, so who cars?? ESL is only good at building fake hype lol

2020-12-14 19:24

will be ez for BIG best lan and online team of 2021

2020-12-14 16:12

3 replies

i dont see bug clan in team list

2020-12-14 21:46

only tier1 teams so no BIG clan

2020-12-15 09:15

KEKW Just 2-0'ed Astralis

2020-12-17 07:24

Costly to arrange a bubble environment

2020-12-14 16:13

2020-12-14 16:29

MONEYMONEYMONEY

2020-12-14 17:09

Probably because of Quarantining issues and visas.

2020-12-15 06:40

still super sick

2020-12-14 16:36

the difference between LAN and online its the audience presure, without it will be the same :/

2020-12-14 16:42

4 replies

No its not, its the comfy thing that matters

2020-12-14 16:59

2 replies

teams like furia and liquid are playing all together just like it was LAN so for them it wouldnt be that different

2020-12-14 17:44

+1 plus they are lan proven teams. Furia grew up play lan in brazil shouting at others players and with crazy audience pressure.

2020-12-14 20:29

big part of the majors are also played without audience for example

2020-12-14 17:15

very unfortunate

2020-12-14 19:17

2020-12-15 06:05

its better there is not ret crowd screaming and giving info So LAN without a crowd is the most competitive tournament

2020-12-16 14:50

2020-12-14 16:01

2020-12-14 15:59

RIP

flag and flair ofc

2020-12-14 16:06

ptsd from last year

2020-12-14 20:08

ez LAN

finally

Ezywho

very good

Ok, who cares. Just host a fucking LAN event.

2020-12-14 16:28

wtf what happened?

Another boring online event because of a flu lmao

5 replies

LAN ????

nope its online. No crowd is like playing online

2020-12-14 16:37

R they still "onliners"?

2020-12-14 16:49

Lol "a flu" this flu can rekt you, your mother & your family including your f-ing neighbour's dog so bloody easily just stfu it's still what it's.

2020-12-15 03:16

no it cant. All my family had it because I got infected and we were all fine. Keep being a sheep

2020-12-15 13:35

What the hell is Illuminar doing here?

26 replies

What the hell is BOOM doing here?

2020-12-14 16:02

25 replies

LMAO are you serious? They have been the best SA team in years

2020-12-14 16:07

24 replies

who the fuck is boom

Flair checks out. BOOM>Illuminar

2020-12-14 18:52

Flair checks out.

2020-12-14 20:24

Derrapaste bro, EU siempre va a ser mucho mejor que NA y SA...

2020-12-14 22:14

who tf is Hampus?????

2020-12-25 06:31

pretty sad that the best SA team is still worse than a tier3 polish team

2020-12-14 16:09

18 replies

What? Top 1 Polish team cant beat tier 5 teams

2020-12-14 16:17

yes exactly my point, but BOOM is even worse than that lol

2020-12-14 16:18

yesterday... case esports... brazilian tier 999 beats Honoris

2020-12-14 16:21

yes honoris is tier9999999

2020-12-14 16:22

Honoris not any tier, it's joke, not team

2020-12-14 17:17

2020-12-14 17:18

I don’t know if you’re baiting or what but BOOM would rekt any polish team. MIBR put a fight(and even won) against top 10 teams with 3 SA players, and these players got rekt by BOOM in every tournament lmao.

2020-12-14 18:51

11 replies

yes this is 2020 SA CS is on the level of NA CS what do you even mean

2020-12-14 18:53

Can you answer what I wrote instead of some nonsense ?

2020-12-14 19:00

9 replies

I did answer - BOOM is on the level of a team like Triumph and Triumph would get destroyed in EU just like BOOM would, simple as that Just because of their inflated ratings (which are like that because they play against SA MM teams) they won't beat anyone in EU lol

2020-12-14 19:06

8 replies

Dude, your wayyyyyy off about SA level. I'm going to write it again since you seem like you can't read and you still didn't answer that part "MIBR put a fight(and even won) against top 10 teams with 3 SA players, and these players got rekt by BOOM in every tournament they played lmao." You pairing them with Triumph seems like a bait seeing that when they were in NA were playing better and better when they got boltz. Just imagine how much of an upgrade was felps to xand, it's a shame that felps left the team before this team can prove what they can do. Reports are saying that fallen and fer are going to play with this roster in a new org, so let's see which team does better in Katowice.

2020-12-14 23:24

7 replies

"MIBR put a fight(and even won) against top 10 teams with 3 SA players, and these players got rekt by BOOM in every tournament they played lmao." I already answered that - it's 2020, who cars about 2018 when we are talking about RIGHT NOW FalleN and fer will just ruin this team, which is sad, but yeah they will get destroyed in Europe, just wait and see...

2020-12-15 00:37

6 replies

No you didn't. 2018? What the fuck are you talking about?

2020-12-15 00:40

"MIBR put a fight(and even won) against top 10 teams with 3 SA players" if you aren't talking about the MIBR with stew and tarik what the fuck are you talking about?

2020-12-15 00:42

Dude, are you dumb? I'm talking about leo_drunky,vsm & lucas1 LOL This MIBR right now.

2020-12-15 00:43

so why are you saying 3 SA players? don't they have 5?

2020-12-15 00:54

With 3 SA players I'm referring to players who are/were playing in SA scene.The majority of MIBR were playing in Brasil and now they're winning against teams like OG, this players were getting rekt by boom. So you can't really tell me that BOOM has the level of Triumph, when even Yeah are playing toes to toes with them.

2020-12-15 01:44

ah yes, fair enough but you can't say that because those players were on worse teams than MIBR is right now and MIBR is pretty scary rn, that's like saying boom would rekt coldzera if coldzera played in idk Havan Liberty or something lol

2020-12-15 01:59

good start

I WANNA SEE COMPLEXITY VS RENEGADES OML

would be a very easy match for Complexity ngl

if INS and dexter keep up good performance, i think it could be close tbh, expecially if poizon is still out

+1 pls makes it happen valve fixed this.

2020-12-15 03:18

LAN POG

at least its on LAN

LAAAN OMFG

cOVERRATEDronavirus strikes again Btw it wouldn't exist at February so I clearly don't understand why measures is still on

What a joke. In china they have 70k people in stadiums watching soccer. No masks also

Wait fr?

What u mean ?

2020-12-14 16:26

Source?

2020-12-14 16:33

twitter.com/RadioSavana/status/132716701..

2020-12-14 16:41

I hate china, they spread virus through the world

2020-12-14 16:46

I hate China and facebook they removed this link i shred there. had to dig this up on another source

so true, everyone is going crazy because of a bit worse flu, we have to live with it like many other viruses

Free money 4 Tyloo

POG

at least its something

This virus is ruining everything but safety first.

fucking hell

finally a LAN

F this sh*t bring back lan events with audience

2020-12-14 16:05

xaxaxaxaxa navi era will start soooooooooon

Yea online is the reason why navi is choking

Finally

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO FUCK YESSSSS

2020-12-14 16:08

Atleast it's LAN

2020-12-14 16:10

Hahaha ptmre

LAN IS BACK BABY SEE YOU PEOPLE IN THE SUMMER

İnvite Sangal izi 1m viewer

Sangal without HUNTERES LUL

2020-12-14 16:38

Let's see, next one or two month sangal will be top 20

2020-12-14 21:05

Space Soldiers without HUNTERES LUL

2020-12-15 02:12

yenidena

2020-12-14 16:58

KENNY BACK

2020-12-14 16:15

So is it an Major? Like real major like boston 2018 or katowice 2019?

2020-12-14 16:16

LAN

2020-12-14 16:19

In January: IEM KATOWICE 2021 TO BE PLAYED ONLINE

Could very well happen, but it makes sense that they will not decide on that too early

First tournament it happened twice to :(

What is Wildcard invite? IEM KATOWICE 2021 will invite some random teams or what? if yes please invite Sinners or Entropiq, rlly good czech teams and ez viewers for stream

no xd they will invite best 6 teams from world ranking

2020-12-14 16:24

oh ok xd thnx for info

2020-12-14 16:32

Wildcard entry team can be anyone from a Top team of the world to the Organizer's son's Gold Nova squad, it depends on the TO.

2020-12-14 17:48

Come to the UK stadium are open and we are allowing audiences

thats why uk have some many cases

Yes we do, most of the country are proud, I'm not

2020-12-14 19:01

Its been an year officially

2020-12-14 16:27

BibleThump

Next month: IEM KATOWICE 2021 TO BE PLAYED ONLINE

Seriously don't understand this bullshit. Most of the sports have started with limited audience allowed. Csgo being one of the most successful eSports game can't handle this? I think teams/franchise can take the safety precautions right . Like seriously wtf man

2020-12-14 16:30

They can literally allow atleast 50% audience . If they can't even handle that then lol on the organizers

2020-12-14 16:31

because countries are closing down again

I don't think most of the European countries. Anyway let's hope atleast it will be LAN's and they won't change again to online

2020-12-14 16:45

I stopped reading at "eSports"

2020-12-14 17:29

Still better then online

Chaos huh

EZ4WOXIC and Astralis. Colossus is coming <3

woxic will be kicked from c9

2020-12-14 16:35

nice bait

look how bad is he he should stop playing , he is bot

2020-12-14 16:39

said finnish guy. Woxic has a ping issue, it's normal. I think he will bring real woxic on lan

2020-12-14 16:43

there we a go a LAN event

Sadge

Koronawice 2021 :(

2020-12-14 16:44

Rather than no audience, strict health protocol is way better..for example, only 35% of the seat are allowed to be sold, confirmed non reactive rdt test 3 days before the event , 10% price raise, compulsory standarized masks usage, etc. More revenue why not..its just feels empty lifting trophy and screaming by themselves

Most of the sports are already doing it. Maybe organizers don't want to take even 1% risk

sad

EZ4GODNIKO

2020-12-14 16:48

"WITHOUT AN AUDIENCE" :(((((

finally we will see all players together

2020-12-14 16:50

NO VP .... NO SAW .... NO BIG.... NO Gambit...

2020-12-14 16:53

yeah man, where are my boyz from BIG, but BOOM LOL

2020-12-14 19:47

boom needs to show if they can compete , even tho i agree , we fer instead of felps they dont have a chance.

2020-12-14 20:48

At last amk

At least its LAN

2020-12-14 17:00

NICE now we have LAN

LAN without audience, empty stage :(((((

2020-12-14 17:02

expected but at least it's a lan !!

2020-12-14 17:03

Thank you for the LANs atleast

2020-12-14 17:06

Who will take Chaos' spot then ? I hope Mouz

2020-12-14 17:07

YIKES

2020-12-14 17:13

always same teams vs same teams a friend recently stopped watchin csgo and i kinda understand why by now...... why not give new teams (eg. faceit upcoming talents) chances to prove themselves and rise up??? nice makin t1 rich players even more rich...............😔😔

2020-12-14 17:19

What do you think makes them rich? Wins do, how do you get wins? Get good players. If you want to be consistent winner, you want to keep your good players and not change rosters. Why change a roster with good players, with a lvl10 faceit player (that is a big risk). Most orgs dont like taking risks

2020-12-14 17:34

u misread what i wrote........ i said COMPLETE new teams, fresh blood.... 5 new ones vs 5 others. NOT t1 teams replacing 1 or 2 players. look at ropz btw, he was a noname (from fpl), and got into mouz, why arent they doing this more often?? and instead of 1 player like ropz just create new 5 man lineups, i guess thats what NIP and ASTRALIS are looking for with the talent scouting program? ..theyre just too late with this tbh, cuz im sick of looking same ol same teams, it RLY gets boring after a while tbh. one time vita wins, then astra, then navi, ...keeps getting recycled gg

2020-12-14 19:11

then go watch tier 4 cs.

2020-12-14 19:20

if i want t4(00) cs i just play faceit myself. No need to spactate that shit :)

2020-12-14 20:39

It might be that there aren't just 5 of ropz hanging around.

2020-12-14 20:19

Oh bro theres MUCH more raw talent out there. Just cuz u dunno or dont see it doesnt mean its not out there... believe me.....

2020-12-14 20:37

It is not free to make a team, have setups, join tournaments and play competitive cs. Of course people could make teams of new names, and give it a go. But whats the point if they will potentially have negative outcomes both economically and performance (because with new players its never guaranteed that it will work out). It is just a big risk to take. And they play not to entertain, but to compete (doesnt matter what they (pros) say)

2020-12-15 10:21

ye i know but life exists only of risks, how did these guys end up here, u think everyone's born a talent? no.. best solution would be if: - t1 teams ALL create 2 academy teams built from faceit/fpl/whatever talent scout, and slowly replace their head team with these new bloods, and current players go analyse/coaching role or whatever... give this 5-8months et voila, proper cs competitive scene again, and yes they have enuf money for this cuz these newbloods aint gonna ask 10k wages per month, theyre even happy with 1/10 of that wage tbh, its free money from gaming afterall

2020-12-15 12:00

Reason why new players get chances in good teams is because of players boots or retirements or changing games. Grim, Bymas, oBo, S1mple himself was a stand in before. When people retired or changed teams or whatever, thats when the youngguns gets their chance. Bymas have a chance cuz of olofs retirement and later on Woxics desition to change team. Grim is playing just bcuz nitro changed to valorant. No teams want to change good players that work well and win throphies, with new unknown faces. Life exists for money nowadays, and many many people are greedy to have it all

2020-12-16 12:58

+1111

2020-12-16 20:34

0/8

2020-12-15 11:43

Ez for tyloo you heard it here first

2020-12-14 17:22

is this gonna be major guys?

2020-12-14 17:23

At least it's LAN... Good thing

2020-12-14 17:39

that sounds so funny haha

2020-12-14 17:31

It will feel so good when these fluke teams like Heroic and fucking BIG get owned And actually good teams like fnatic and mouz comeback

2020-12-14 17:32

2020-12-14 17:38

And then they will announce that this gonna be online as well Check

2020-12-14 17:41

Best event iem

2020-12-14 17:46

noooo

Finally Navi can show their full potential again like Katowice 2020 and all onliners will be put back in their place.

2020-12-14 17:47

what does play in mean?

2020-12-14 17:49

Just like in Major :)

2020-12-14 18:24

LAN enough

2020-12-14 17:51

Really sad, but kinda expected. When will this shit end?

2020-12-14 17:52

This is where it started, will this be where it ends?

2020-12-14 18:00

expected, but still sad

2020-12-14 18:08

I hope TeamOne get invited

2020-12-14 18:11

going to go online in a few weeks or month

2020-12-14 18:12

WHO CARES ABOUT THIS LAME TOURNAMENT ONLY IEM COLOGNE

2020-12-14 18:16

it means LAN without crowd?

2020-12-14 18:28

I had tickets f..k

2020-12-14 18:45

INVICTUS WILL BE WILDCARD INVITE AND DESTROY TYLOO

2020-12-14 18:57

:(((( sad

Unfortunate that it's katowice, but hopefully it stays a lan

2020-12-14 19:07

You kidding me right? WHY DOES IT HAPPEN AGAIN

EZ for navi again if LAN !

2020-12-14 19:26

Still much better than Online!!! :) lovely!

2020-12-14 19:34

Sad. At least it won't be online only (hopefully...).

2020-12-14 19:40

Sad to not have audience, but LAN is great!

but but but,... how will all the teams Stream snipe then??

2020-12-14 19:50

No qualifer?

2020-12-14 19:55

Fancams is ok

2020-12-14 20:15

IEM KATOWICE 2021 TO BE PLAYED WITHOUT ENCE

2020-12-14 20:44

Please remain LAN!

2020-12-14 20:47

Chaos... ;-;

2020-12-14 20:53

2020-12-14 21:14

Thanks china

2020-12-14 21:16

I'd say delay it, kato is always the most electrifying, most competitive, best tournament of any esports of the year. Its sad but i guess its fair, at least its a lan and not online.

2020-12-14 21:21

covid not going anytime soon even next year december will still be around

2020-12-15 16:20

i dont think so. vaccination begin in january or feb in EU and its possible LAN events would be held in next Fall

2020-12-18 16:44

vaccine in EU is only for the vulnerable ppl. Most people within ranges of like 20-40 will not be getting vaccinated anytime soon.

2020-12-18 17:49

and? by summer 50% will be vaccinated. not only will the vaccine prevent most deaths, but also help to create a herd immunity which will stop the virus from spreading too fast. also from this years experience we know the virus is weak during summer which will lead to just max 100 cases/day/country. in may-june corona will become another flu.

2020-12-27 00:45

eazy for mouz and bongJ

2020-12-14 21:23

Ty, Ch!n@!

2020-12-14 22:05

say it out loud instead of hiding it

2020-12-15 02:52

He most likely doesn't want to lose social credit just in case LOL

2020-12-23 11:37

who cars

2020-12-14 22:10

Sooo sad :(

2020-12-14 22:21

invite sAw, we are lan players #sAwtouadar

2020-12-15 00:02

why dont they just make this a major

2020-12-15 00:12

NO FNATIC SHITSHOW NOT WATCHING DIS

2020-12-15 00:58

fnatic are in mate

2020-12-15 16:19

2020-12-15 02:21

Feel like renegades gonna smash this one

I want to see pros shouting at the empty seating

2020-12-16 08:53

atleast dont 10h before event start

2020-12-16 17:41

I already have a ticket

2020-12-17 12:29

will be very surprising if it will organize even without audience. They are gonna cancel this 100%. LANs never coming back guys :(

2020-12-17 23:03

Don't be pessimistic LANs will come back, but probably not before the second semester of 2021

2020-12-23 11:40

This covid is ruinin everything

2020-12-20 21:50

Great ! I hope everyone is supporting them by watching, at least we will be back to LAN !!!!!

2020-12-23 11:36

ZywOone

2020-12-23 11:42

2020-12-25 06:38

EZ4NAVI

Fair enough

2020-12-26 02:33

covid agenda still going strong. cya in 2022!

2020-12-27 00:40

well maybe someday my tickets for cologne will be useful.I bought them back in october of 2019,i hope all this shit pandemia will end at april.It doesnt make sense rly

2020-12-28 09:10