Russian team attempted to play NA Cash Cup
Russian team 1shot have been disqualified from ESEA Spring Cash Cup 1 2022 for a fairly obvious reason — not being located in North America. The top 50 ranked team seemed to be unaware of the fairly obvious rule requiring teams to only play events in their home region. As such, after receiving a round one bye, the team were disqualified against Eros.
Before checking into the North American Cash Cup, 1shot played in the European Cash Cup, making top eight before being knocked out by Russian mixteam NYCH. While ESEA's Cash Cups have been extremely popular in North America, a mix of a jam packed schedule and a small $4,000 prizepool has seen the EU version of the event fail to attract Europe's best sub-top teams.
For some rulebook context, ESL lays out what countries are allowed to participate in each region in their ESL Pro Tour General Rulebook. Importantly, the rulebook only applies to a team's location rather than their players' nationalities, a rule that allows NA-based teams like ATK, Bad News Bears, and Kinship to play with their full lineups.
As a result, for now we won't be seeing 1shot in any NA events unless they want to make the jump over the pond and set up permanent shop in the region.
