NIP and Passion UA face elimination after DraculaN day 1

Two of the tournament's high seeds got off to a rocky start in the Bucharest.

Ninjas in Pyjamas and Passion UA fell short in the opening round of the DraculaN Season 1 playoffs on Friday and now face elimination from the Romanian LAN.

Ranked 21st in the global VRS, the Ninjas were humbled by EYEBALLERS, who picked up 13-3 wins on Mirage and Dust2 either side of a 13-9 affair on Ancient. It's the fourth defeat in a row for Ninjas in Pyjamas, who have yet to win an official match since the top-12 finish at IEM Cologne.

"Very positive notes in Cologne, but since then we haven't hit the same level we show in practice," NIP captain Marco "⁠Snappi⁠" Pfeiffer wrote on X after the match.

"Not good enough from me/us, but we will do everything in our power to turn it around. We start tomorrow."

Meanwhile, Passion UA's new lineup debuted with a narrow loss to Monte. The 2-0 scoreline doesn't tell the whole story as both Nuke (13-11) and Train (16-13) were very close, with Lithuanian duo Aurimas "⁠Bymas⁠" Pipiras and Gytis "⁠ryu⁠" Glušauskas leading the charge for the European team with a combined 89 frags.

The day ended with the other two high seeds, fnatic and Gentle Mates, coming back from a map down to beat ENCE and 9INE, respectively.

DraculaN Season 1, held at the Nexus Gamers Pub in Bucharest, features a prize pool of nearly $10,000. It is among the array of of small-scale international open LANs that are scheduled to take place leading up to the invite cutoff for the Budapest Major on October 6.

Below you can find tomorrow's schedule:

Date	Matches
DraculaN Season 1
30/08/2025	EYEBALLERS 10:00 fnatic	Match
30/08/2025	Monte 10:00 Gentle Mates	Match
30/08/2025	Passion UA 13:00 9INE	Match
30/08/2025	Ninjas in Pyjamas 14:00 ENCE	Match