DreamHack have announced an online Masters tournament called DreamHack Masters Spring. It will take over nearly a month of the calendar in late spring and is supposed to fill the void left by the rescheduling of DreamHack Masters Jönköping due to the coronavirus.
First-ever online DreamHack Masters
DreamHack Masters Spring has been set up for online play amid the coronavirus pandemic. The first Masters event of the year was supposed to be in Jönköping, Sweden, but that became impossible once the health crisis hit Europe. These will be the first DreamHack Masters playoffs to be played online – a sad precedent in the CS:GO lore.
DreamHack Masters Spring sets a positive milestone too at least. For the first time, a tournament of this stature will hit the $300,000 prize pool mark - $50,000 more than the usual mark. This stash of cash will be split between 32 teams in four separate regions - $160,000 for Europe, $100,000 for North America and $20,000 for each one of Asia and Oceania.
The new tournament will be played over several weeks – from May 19 until June 14, with varying schedules and format for different regions. Europe and NA will play in the DHM standard groups + playoffs format – the first stage taking place from May 19 until May 30 and the playoffs from June 8 to June 14. Asia and Oceania will go straight into a double-elimination bracket that will fill in the gap between June 2 and June 7.
In case you haven’t caught up yet, all of this means that we’re going to have four separate champions of DreamHack Masters Spring… or none, depending on how you look at it. Regardless, all of this is going to count for the ESL Pro Tour like a regular Masters would. The Tour is in full swing currently with the ESL Pro League in its pinnacle moments.
