The New Challengers Stage of IEM Katowice begins Wednesday, Feb. 13, and it turns out Fnatic was seeded as the number one team at the start of the $1 million event.
ESL and Valve introduced a brand-new system to determine matchups in the Swiss Format group stage of Majors—a player-selected seeding combined with a team elo rating. This way there’s less aspects of randomness involved in subsequent matchups, where some teams would get easier or harder routes to the next stage of the Major. By the end of the team seeding vote, Fnatic was perceived to be the number one team out of the 16 attendees at the New Challengers stage.
Related: What to expect at the IEM Katowice CS:GO Major
Teams like Cloud9, Ninjas in Pyjamas, G2 Esports, AVANGAR, Team Spirit, and Winstrike put the Swedish powerhouse at the top of their team seeding rankings. They received an average rating in the rankings of 1.79 ahead of other top contenders like NRG Esports and Cloud9, who were also towards the top of the charts. As one of six returning challengers, Fnatic will be looking to defend their IEM Katowice title from 2018, except that tournament wasn’t a Valve-funded tournament.
“I’m confident we can defend our [2018] Katowice [title], that is obviously the goal,” Freddy “KRIMZ” Johansson said in a recent announcement regarding his contract renewal with the organization. “However, in terms of expectations and ‘predictions’, I would say we are going to be insanely disappointed if we don’t reach top four.”
Fnatic newcomer Ludvig “Brollan” Brolin will also be making his Valve Major debut at the event. Since joining the veteran roster, Brollan has averaged a 1.13 HLTV 2.0 rating on LAN.
Below is a full list of the overall rankings of the New Challenger teams from one to 16. The final average ranking is also shown, after deviant outlier rankings were discarded.
- Fnatic (1.79)
- NRG Esports (2.46)
- Cloud9 (3.29)
- Ninjas in Pyjamas (3.33)
- ENCE Esports (3.91)
- Team Vitality (6.00)
- G2 Esports (6.79)
- AVANGAR (8.15)
- Vega Squadron (9.75)
- TyLoo (9.85)
- Team Spirit (10.69)
- FURIA Esports (12.00)
- Grayhound Gaming (13.57)
- Winstrike (13.62)
- ViCi Gaming (14.07)
For the full average rundown of the rankings, check out ESL’s public document regarding the seeding votes. It includes the raw averages and final averages for each team competing in the first stage of IEM Katowice.
