North American teams placed in IEM Sydney Groups

The start of next month will see international CS:GO return to Australia, with IEM Sydney hitting the country's most populous city. May 1st-6th will see four North American-based teams take on various teams who compete on the world's stage and domestically in Australia.

Also read: NRG qualify for IEM Sydney over compLexity

Thanks to ESL's standarized tournament format, being implemented in all but ESL One Belo Horizonte, the competition will start off with two eight-team GSL-style groups before moving onto the playoffs. The two groups are as follows:

Group A	Group B
FaZe	mousesports
Space Soldiers	Astralis
Renegades	NRG
Cloud9	Natus Vincere
SK	Fnatic
TyLoo	B.O.O.T-d[S]
ORDER	MVP PK
Grayhound	Chiefs

Looking on the outside of it, the groups seem fairly lopsided, with Group A holding four of the seven invited teams to the event. By virtue of this, all of the invited North American-based sides reside in Group A, with just NRG fighting it alone in Group B.

Also read: IEM Sydney Talent revealed

Although the schedule is yet to be released, we know what the first round of games are set to be, which are:

Group A
FaZe	vs. ORDER
Space Soldiers	vs. Renegades
Cloud9	vs. Grayhound
SK	vs. TyLoo
Group B
mousesports	vs. B.O.O.T-d[S]
NRG	vs. Astralis
Natus Vincere	vs. MVP PK
Chiefs	vs. Fnatic

The first game at IEM Sydney will kick-off at 10pm EDT on April 30th, before continuing onto 5am EDT the following day.