The world's best Counter-Strike: Global Offensive teams will compete for a $250,000 "community-funded" prize pool at ESL One Cologne 2014, Valve announced today. The prize money was raised through last year's Arms Deal Update for CS: GO, which directed proceeds from sales of a special eSports weapon case toward larger prize pools and greater visibility for competitive gaming.
ESL One Cologne will run from August 14 to 17 at Gamescom, and will feature 16 top teams, including eight regional qualifiers and eight invited quarter-finalists from EMS One Katowice:
- Virtus.pro
- Ninjas in Pyjamas
- Team Dignitas
- TEAMGLOBAL (former LGB eSports)
- compLexity Gaming
- HellRaisers
- Team LDLC.com
- Fnatic
"Having watched the finals in Katowice it will be absolutely brilliant to watch Virtus.pro and Ninjas in Pyjamas take the stage again in Cologne," ESL Product Manager Alexander Nehr said. "With exciting teams such as Team Dignitas and HellRaisers, who constantly improve their gameplay to surprise their opponents, the tournament looks to be fantastic."
ESL One Cologne 2014 is actually the third community-funded CS: GO event. The first was the 2013 DreamHack SteelSeries Championship and the second was the EMS One Championship at Katowice, which drew more than 240,000 concurrent viewers for the final and ended with 3.5 million hours of video watched in total. To find out more about the upcoming event in Cologne, hit up esl-one.com/csgo .
