DreamLeague has a new champion; Team Spirit take DreamLeague Season 21 title

The reign of Gaimin Gladiators for DreamLeague is over — instead, DreamLeague Season 21 crowned Team Spirit as champions. 

DreamLeague Season 21 lower bracket rounds kicked off Friday with the two-time champions Gaimin Gladiators being knocked out of the competition by Entity.

• Read TI12 favourites suffer an early exit at DreamLeague Season 21

That paved the way for other teams and instead, the top two teams for each group —Shopify Rebellion and Team Spirit had their moments to shine. 

Overpowering Shopify 2:1 in the upper bracket finals, Team Spirit moved into the grand finals. But Shopify wasn't done yet. 

The NA squad bested BetBoom 2:1 to gain a spot in the grand finals and the chance to exact revenge on Team Spirit. 

Team SpiritvsShopify Rebellion 3:0

In the first match, a lot was dependent on Shopify's timings. They had to play fast, apply early pressure, take early Roshans, and claim early objectives. Shopify started out exactly as planned, taking first blood and having a strong laning phase and incredible tempo. But while they were able to hit their timings, things just went too long and too far, allowing Team Spirit time to catch up and creating difficulties for Shopify to close out the game. In fact, TS ended up taking the match right out from under them to take the first-game advantage in the series. 

Shopify came out in the second game with a stronger overall draft with amplifiers, mixed damage, and a promising Gyrocopter. But Team Spirit wasn't afraid. They were armed with a Terrorblade and Enchantress combo. Although Team Spirit's cores were beasts, the supports were able to apply pressure on the map and enable the cores to do what was needed. Shopify couldn't take a team fight to save themselves or the game and ended up losing another match. 

With their backs against the wall, Shopify went with a Storm Spirit for Abed "Abed" Yusop for the third game. Team Spirit focused on him early and then with all three of their cores scaling up pretty hard, the EEU team easily started to run away with the lead. Absolutely dominating every team fight, Team Spirit easily swept through Shopify for the DreamLeague Season 21 title. 

DreamLeague Season 21 Prize Pool

$1,000,000 is spread among the participants as seen below:

• 1st place - $300,000 Team Spirit
• 2nd place -  $175,000 Shopify Rebellion
• 3rd place - $120,000 BetBoom Team
• 4th place - $85,000 OG
• 5th/6th place - $57,500 Entity / Tundra Esports
• 7th/8th place - $47,500 Gaimin Gladiators / 9Pandas
• 9th-10th place - $30,000 Team Liquid / Evil Geniuses
• 11th-12th place - $25,000 Quest Esports / Talon Esports