The invited teams for tomorrow's VENN Invitational have been announced and we will see Extra Salt, High Coast, paiN, Triumph, and Recon 5 join the ranks of the teams that went through qualifiers last week.
IT'S QUALIFER TIME 💥
— BLAST Premier 💥 (@BLASTPremier) March 17, 2021
From March 18-28 we will have 7 qualifiers running to fill the remaining 7 Showdown slots 👀
Dune Cup
Latin Power
Unity Cup
Winstrike CIS Cup
Fantasyexpo Cup
VENN Invitational
Nordic Masters
Good luck to all the teams participating 💪#BLASTPremier pic.twitter.com/H6c4rp0xyd
The VENN Invitational is a direct qualifier for the BLAST Premier Spring Showdown and the winner of this weekend's event will receive a $25,000 participation fee and a free bootcamp in Europe as they make the trip for the BLAST event.
It's worth noting that Bad News Bears will not be in attendance. Michael "Swisher" Schmid told Dust2.us that his side were invited and initially accepted the invitation, but then realized that the bootcamp being offered to the winner would cause them problems during ESEA Premier Season 36 playoffs which prompted them to withdraw from the event instead.
The groups for the VENN Invitational are:
| Group A | Group B |
 Extra Salt |
 paiN |
 High Coast |
Triumph |
| ex-Rebirth |
RBG |
| Levitate |
Recon 5 |
Group A will play a double-elimination group bracket to completion tomorrow, while Group B will do the same on Saturday. All group-stage matches will be in a best-of-one format, while Sunday's playoff matches will all utilize a best-of-three format.
The initial matchups for the first round are:
| Extra Salt |
vs. | Levitate |
| High Coast |
vs. | ex-Rebirth |
| paiN |
vs. | Recon 5 |
| Triumph |
vs. | RBG |
The first match begins at 3PM EST tomorrow.