More than $300,000 Australian dollary-doos has been put up for grabs in the largest Oceanic Rocket League tournament to date, ESL Rocket League Oceanic Championship, announced today.
Established by esport company ESL Australia and Rocket League publisher Psyonix, the tournament is open to players from Micronesia to Stewart Island to Perth. ESL bosses claim their innovative new format will encourage team participation and competitive play like never before in the unique three-versus-three car/football hybrid.
ESL Australia publisher development manager Ben Green said ESL “jumped” at the opportunity to partner with esports leader Rocket League.
“As the future of sport turns towards online platforms, we will look to deliver the evolution of digital competition, starting with the ESL Rocket League Oceanic Championship,” Green said. “Rocket League has always been a leader in the esports space, so the opportunity for us at ESL to partner with Psyonix here in the Oceanic region was something we jumped on.”
The tournament will be broken up into three splits, or stages, starting August 15 and scheduled to run through to April next year. Each split has a prize pool of more than $100,000 AUD that will be divvied out among the top eight teams of each event.
The top teams from each split will also earn qualification points towards the Rocket League Championship Series (RLCS) X Majors and the Rocket League World Championship, the pinnacle of Rocket League competition involving the world’s best Rocket League teams. Players are invited to sign up to the ESL Rocket League Oceanic Championship from early next week, on ESL Play.
ESL has confirmed they will begin announcing participating teams for the newly-announced Oceanic Championship after sign-ups. Snowball Esports expects the official lineup to include teams like Ground Zero Gaming, Mindfreak, Arora Esports, and RLO Grand Slam champions Renegades.
Current free agents “Cringe Society,” which includes former North American RLCS star Matthew “Drippay” Den-Kaat, will also likely participate.
Fortnite publisher Epic acquired the independent game studio Psyonix for an undisclosed sum in May last year.
