Azure Ray's loss is a win for Team Spirit at DreamLeague Season 23

Azure Ray's drop from DreamLeague Season 23 along with their hopes of a direct invite to Riyadh Masters. 

DreamLeague Season 23 began the weekend with a bit less chaos than yesterday but still with an equally difficult elimination series. Although the ISP services in Romania where many of the teams are boot camping from for DreamLeague were stable, it didn't seem to help Azure Ray to land a direct invite to Riyadh Masters.   

• Read Internet issues continue to plague DreamLeague Season 23; Heroic falls

Instead, the head-to-head matchup against Xtreme Gaming was an interesting, if not upsetting, one in storylines. Five months ago Azure Ray turned everything around to reverse sweep their way to the championship win at ESL One Kuala Lumpur 2023. They were the first Chinese team to bring a ray of hope for their region ahead of the new year with their incredible run. But shortly after, despite claiming the championship title in Malaysia and thus becoming the top team in the ESL Pro Tour (EPT) ranking, Azure Ray dropped down to just two players. Zhao "XinQ" Zixing, Guo "Xm" Hongcheng and Lin "Xxs" Jing headed over to…. yep, you guessed (or remembered) it… Xtreme Gaming. Points allocated to Azure Ray were transferred to Xtreme due to the majority of players switching organizations. The roster change meant their points were reduced by 30%. Ouch. That came back to bite them pretty hard. 

With this 2:1 victory over Azure Ray, the former members who put AR at the top of the EPT and then dropped them are now responsible for ultimately gatekeeping them from the direct invite. 

But as always, one man's garbage is another man's treasure. Azure Ray's loss solidified Team Spirit's invite to Riyadh Masters and finalized the invite team lineup. 

Azure Ray will now need to participate in the qualifiers for a place at the hottest (literally) event of the year. 

The action resumes at DreamLeague Season 23 with the upper bracket finals before returning to another elimination series 

Gaimin GladiatorsvsTeam Falcons 15:40 CEST
BetBoom TeamvsXtreme Gaming 19:00 CEST

DreamLeague Season 23

DreamLeague Season 23 Playoff Teams

•  BetBoom Team (EPT Leaderboard)
• Xtreme Gaming (EPT Leaderboard)
• Gaimin Gladiators (EPT Leaderboard)
• Team Falcons (EPT Leaderboard)
• Tundra Esports (Western Europe)
•   Azure Ray (China) eliminated
•  Aurora Gaming (Southeast Asia) eliminated
•  Heroic (South America) eliminated

DreamLeague Season 23 Playoffs Format

• Playoffs - May 23 - May 26, 2024
  • Double-elimination bracket
  • All matches are Bo3
  • Grand Final is Bo5

DreamLeague Season 23 Tournament Prize Pool

• Prize pool: $1,000,000
• Total EPT Points: 26,100

DreamLeague Season 23

Twelve teams gathered in boot camps in Europe to compete for a share of the $1,000,000 prize pool and 26,100 EPT points. At this point with no DPC, many expect that the EPT points will be critical for participating in ESL's LANs and might be the biggest factor in determining The International 2024 invites. 

DreamLeague Season 23 will be followed by Riyadh Masters. This will be the least DreamLeague Season before The International 2024. Check out the ESL EPT Pathing and results so far:

• Read ESL Pro Tour 2024: A midway snapshot