Week 28: Esports roster updates and tournament news

BLAST cleared Team Liquid to use Roland ‘ultimate’ Tomkowiak at BLAST Premier Bounty in place of new signing Georgi ‘Jorko’ Mitev. BLAST’s statement reads: “Team Liquid are allowed to use 3 or more of the following players at the BLAST Premier Bounty: malbsMd, EliGE, NAF-FLY and Ultimate,” allowing Liquid to appear at the event with ultimate as their AWPer. Team Liquid had previously announced they would need to field ultimate rather than Jorko for the Bounty event.

BLAST also published the draft order for Bounty Season 2. The 32-team event will open with a live draft show on Friday at 17:00, with 3DMAX holding the first pick. The lower 16 seeds will select opponents during the draft. The online stage begins July 21.

FACEIT announced that Season 9 will start on August 5 and apply a soft Elo reset to all accounts. Players must play 10 placement matches to regain a rank after the reset. The soft reset follows a harder reset at the start of Season 8 that aimed to reduce top-end Elo inflation and address accounts that held old ranks despite inactivity. FACEIT has also opened a vote on whether half-time voice chat between opposing teams should return for the first week of the new season.

The United Kingdom named its roster for the Europe West qualifier of the Esports Nations Cup, scheduled for July 17-19. The six players are Oscar ‘AZUWU’ Bell, Jack ‘Gizmy’ von Spreckelsen, Cai ‘CYPHER’ Watson, Owen ‘smooya’ Butterfield, Sebastian ‘volt’ Maloș (dual citizen), and Marco ‘MMS’ Salomone, with Max ‘MiGHTYMAX’ Heath listed as coach. Four slots at the main Esports Nations Cup event will be available to teams from a group of countries including Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain, Denmark, Iceland, Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Ireland, Norway, Switzerland, France, Italy and Portugal.

In regional competition, fnatic won ESL Challenger League Season 52 Europe Cup 1 in their first event with the refreshed lineup. fnatic beat SPARTA, BRUTE and HOTU in the playoff run to claim $4,000 and a place in the Season 52 Europe Finals. Artem ‘cairne’ Mushynskyi led fnatic with a 1.48 average rating over 12 maps and posted a 2.24 rating in the final series, which included a 13-0 win on Ancient. Seventeen-year-old Volodymyr ‘mazay’ Iorhachov averaged a 1.04 rating across the event.

In North America, NRG won FRAG St. Clair by defeating SportsBetExpert 3-1 in the grand final, with head coach Damian ‘daps’ Steele acting as a stand-in. NRG recently signed Håkon ‘hallzerk’ Fjærli as their AWPer and reinstated Jeorge ‘Jeorge’ Endicott after parting ways earlier in the year. Aran ‘Sonic’ Groesbeek posted the event-high numbers for NRG and finished the event with a 1.64 rating and 104.5 ADR.

BLAST Premier Bounty will proceed to its online stage following the live draft, and FACEIT’s Season 9 reset and community vote will take effect when the new season begins on August 5.