ECS reveal Pinnacle Cup invites and schedule
With the tournament beginning tomorrow, FACEIT have revealed the invites for the upcoming Pinnacle Cup tournament. The tournament will see 16 teams face off against each other for seeding and a better chance of playing during the regular season in FACEIT's new format. The tournament was previously known as the Challenger Cup, and renamed due to a two-season sponsorship deal with the gambling company Pinnacle.
After eight teams qualified during the opening stage, the tournament's remaining eight teams have been invited. All bare one of these teams are found in various positions in ESEA's MDL division, with ESL Pro League's INTZ as the exception, and are as follows:
| Pinnacle Cup Invited Teams | |
|---|---|
 Bad News Bears |
 Denial |
| Final Feature |
 FURIA |
| INTZ |
Old Guys Club |
| oNe |
Singularity |
With the announcement of the invited teams, FACEIT have also released the schedule and first fixtures for the Pinnacle Cup. As announced before the season started, the format is a best-of-three Swiss series, which will take place between March 5-7th. The top two teams (i.e. those with a 3-0 record) will all but guarantee their attendance at some point during the regular season. The first round games are as follows, with times in EST:
| March 5th | |
|---|---|
| 6:00 PM | Party Astronauts -vs- MASSIVEimpact |
| 6:00 PM | FURIA -vs- Final Feature |
| 6:00 PM | INTZ -vs- Old Guys Club |
| 6:00 PM | Denial -vs- Infamous |
| 9:00 PM | oNe -vs- iNTACT |
| 9:00 PM | Ghost -vs- The Quest |
| 9:00 PM | Bad News Bears -vs- Zone |
| 9:00 PM | Singularity -vs- Mythic |
With the above match-ups, FACEIT have seeded the competition based off previous results, and not just in the traditional "invited team -vs- qualified team" system as has been seen in other tournaments.
The schedule for the remaining two days are as follows:
| March 6th | |
| 6:00 PM | 1-0 Matches |
| 6:00 PM | 0-1 Matches |
| 9:00 PM | 2-0 Matches |
| 9:00 PM | 1-1 Matches |
| 9:00 PM | 0-2 Matches |
| March 7th | |
| 6:00 PM | 2-1 Matches |
| 6:00 PM | 1-2 Matches |
| 9:00 PM | 2-2 Matches |
The Pinnacle Cup also sees the return of ECS Community Caster Challenge. In a similar format to previous seasons, FACEIT has opened the Pinnacle Cup matches to community level commentators for broadcast. In order to sign-up, you must be able to broadcast at least one of the matches over the coming week, and be able to provide a VOD of the stream.
Selected casters will be required to use the provided Pinnacle Cup stream overlay, and stream on their own channel on a "reasonable live-streaming platform," with Twitch, YouTube, Caffeine and Mixer listed. At the end of the tournament two casters, one from Europe and one from North America, will be selected by James Bardolph to attend the ECS Season 7 Finals in London. A form to sign-up in order to be selected can be found at the bottom of this web page.
The ECS Season 7 Pinnacle Cup starts tomorrow, at 6:00 PM EST. The Season 7 Regular Season commences next week, on March 11th with the first of the five best-of-three knock out series.
