SA seeded top in RMR
ESL have announced the seeding for the Americas Road to Rio RMR, potentially disappointing some North American teams and fans. Teams coming from the South American qualifier have received a slight seeding advantage, with them being seeded higher than their NA counterparts. The rest of the seeding has followed a similar to Europe.
The seeding, as described by an ESL blog post is below:
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Teams coming from the top 16 at the PGL Antwerp Major will be seeded 1st - 3rd in the order of their final placing from that event
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Teams coming from the open qualifiers will be seeded 4th - 16th
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Based on the final placing at the PGL Antwerp Major, teams coming from the open qualifiers will be seeded as follows:
○ 1st - 3rd from SA open qualifier 1 will be seeded 4th, 6th and 8th
○ 1st - 2nd from NA open qualifier 1 will be seeded 5th and 7th
○ 1st - 2nd from SA open qualifier 2 will be seeded 9th and 11th
○ 1st - 2nd from NA open qualifier 2 will be seeded 10th and 12th
○ 1st - 2nd from SA open qualifier 3 will be seeded 13th and 15th
○ 1st - 2nd from NA open qualifier 3 will be seeded 14th and 16th
This sees obvious favourites from the Antwerp Major FURIA, Imperial, and Liquid as the top three seeds and the rest being filled out by the open qualifiers in order of completion. Making a change from the Antwerp Major, where the seeding was not chronologically based, teams will now be rewarded for qualifying earlier than others. The final seeding order is:
1. 
FURIA
2. Imperial
3. 
Liquid
4. paiN
5. 
Complexity
6. MIBR
7. Squirtle Squad
8. 00 Nation
9. 
9z
10. Evil Geniuses
11. 0 Plano
12. 
ATK
13. Arctic
14. oNe
15. 
Isurus
16. Infinity
With the seeding set, the opening swiss matchups have also been determined and announced.
FURIA vs Infinity Imperial vs Isurus Liquid vs oNe paiN vs Arctic
Complexity vs ATK MIBR vs O Plano Squirtle Squad vs Evil Geniuses 00 Nation vs 9z
Teams will be travelling to Stockholm, Sweden for the competition which will see the top six qualifying for the Rio Major. Some teams, such as Squirtle Squad also have planned to travel earlier to Europe for a bootcamp period in hopes that it will significantly increase their performance versus their usual opponents.
The first matches are set for October 5th at 06:00AM, which some have criticized as too early for many American viewers and why the RMR should have been held somewhere in the Americas instead.
