Rio Major 2020 Moved to November will Feature the Largest Prize Pool ever in Counter-Strike History

Cover And Thumbnail Image Courtesy: ESL One

ESL has announced that the Rio Major 2020 which was scheduled to take place in May has been moved to the month of November due to the coronavirus situation. The tournament will still be taking place at Jeunesse Arena, Rio from 19^th-22^nd November with its prize pool being increased to $2,000,000, which is also the largest prizepool for a single tournament in Counter-Strike history.

With this change the tournament is actually taking the slot for the fall major of the year, confirming the fact that only one CS:GO Major will be taking place this year, which is also the reason why the prize pool has been increased from 1 to 2 million, combining the prizepool of both the Majors.

This is the first time since 2013 that only one CS:GO Major would be played in a year. The organizers further announced that the “tickets purchased for the May date will be valid for the November date.” While also giving fans who don’t want to retain their ticket an option to request for a refund.

Information regarding the minor championships along with the first two stages of the Major has not been revealed as of yet, updates on which will be announced shortly.

Ulrich Schulze - Senior Vice President of Product at ESL via a Reddit post further stated that “Qualification and invitations for the November Major need be considered afresh – there’s currently no official information on who is qualified and who is not, and how all that will work.”

He concluded by saying that further planning and clarification on things “requires a great deal of work and consideration,” urging everyone to be patient.

ESL has to be careful on how it proceeds on deciding which teams are directly invited and how the qualifiers for the Major would be played out, they have already faced a lot of backlash from the community with regards to the changes they introduced to the currently on-going season of the ESL Pro League. Let’s see what the organizes come up with in the coming weeks.