Counter-Strike Flashpoint - Season 1 Status
The FLASHPOINT teams, dates and schedule have finally materialized after several months of fans trying to understand whether or not there would be any LAN Counter-Strike to be played. Despite BLAST kicking 2020 off in a promising manner, the global Coronavirus pandemic has hit esports hard, with every day bringing new announcements of cancelled crowds or tournaments.
The speculation of fans when it came to the race between the ESL Pro League and FLASHPOINT has been brought to an unfortunate conclusion. ESL announced that closures of travel routes to Malta have forced them to shift their league to be played online, and the LAN Finals will be moved to a studio location in Denver. With this, FLASHPOINT will be the only league to be played out on LAN.
Of course, FLASHPOINT has not been without casualty to the virus either. The originally planned finals in Stockholm have been cancelled, and teams will, instead, be playing the full season out - including playoffs - from the FLASHPOINT studio in Los Angeles.
While ESL is going to be hit hard by the shift to online Counter-Strike, it still goes without saying that they will have the superior teams. FLASHPOINT - which was initially supposed to begin with 10 franchised partner teams - has failed to collect ten partners to buy into its league. Although it was already becoming clear that the ESL Pro League would be coming out on top in terms of calibre of teams initially, few people were under the impression that FLASHPOINT would outright fail to bring its stated ten partners on board.
The FLASHPOINT teams are as follows:
MAD Lions - Franchise Owner
Gen. G - Franchise Owner
MIBR - Franchise Owner
C0ntact - Franchise Owner
Dignitas - Franchise Owner
Envy - Franchise Owner
FunPlus Phoenix - Franchise Owner
Orgless
Chaos
HAVU
Copenhagen Flames
While the FLASHPOINT league is not off to the best of starts, the partners they have managed to acquire have historically deep pockets, and there is little doubt that ESL Pro League teams will soon be finding their grip over players to be foam fingered at best, should the cheque book be pulled out.
FLASHPOINT’s schedule has been announced on HLTV, and the league broadcast formally begins at 7PM GMT, 8PM CET with the group selection process on the 12th of March which can be viewed live on their Twitch channel.
Image via FLASHPOINT