ESL One Frankfurt 2014 opens up Asian qualifiers

ESL One has now opened the registration for the Asian qualifiers. Two teams from Asia will join Alliance, Natus Vincere and four other teams in the $150,000+ main event of the competition which will be held in Frankfurt, Germany on 28-29 June.

The Asian qualifiers will all consist of similar three stages - an open national qualifier, a 'battle royale' and the Asian finals. The first phase is via open registration, the second is via qualification and the third is via invitation.

There will be nine different national qualifiers. The top two teams from most of these single-elimination qualifiers will advance into the next round. The respective qualifiers are:

As said earlier, the top two teams from all the qualifiers except Japan's and rest-of-Asia will advance into the next stage. For Japan and rest-of-asia though, only the champion team will move through. These are all one-day tournaments, and the qualifiers are currently ongoing.

The next stage is the battle royale, in which the qualifier winners will compete against each other. The 16 teams which advanced from the national qualifiers will be divided into groups, and the top teams from each group will be placed on a single-elimination playoff battle. The battle royale is scheduled to take place 3-4 May.

The final stage is the Asian finals, in which we are going to see the top two teams from the battle royale joining six other invited teams. It will be a multi-stage tournament, starting with groups and finishing with double-elimination playoffs. The champion team will be one of the two teams representing Asia at ESL One Frankfurt. The invited teams are yet to be announced.

China is reportedly having its own finals, but details pertaining to that are still unannounced at the moment.

There is also an ongoing European and American qualifier for ESL One. However, instead of having national qualifiers, those two are having open qualifiers instead. The open qualifiers for Europe have already finished, and the main qualifiers will begin this 14 April.

ESL One Frankfurt will be held on 28-29 June. Aside from the two Asian teams advancing from the Asian qualifiers, the main event will also feature invited teams Natus Vincere and Alliance as well three teams from the European qualifiers and one team from the American qualifiers. The prize pool of this tournament is $150,000 plus a portion of the DotaTV ticket sales.

ESL One Frankfurt is also just the third event, and second for third-party-hosted competitions, to have a Compendium.

Source: ESL Asia