【】

The first season of ESL Pro Series Scandinavia is ready to set off this week.

Sunday featured the last-chance qualifier, seeing eight teams competing for the remaining two spots in EPS Scandinavia. Sweden succeeded in getting the two spots, as lanklan and Playzone.se both eliminated Danish teams in the deciding matches. This finalizes the list of teams for the first season. The season will consist of following ten teams:

mTw – ave, MJE, Sunde, zonic & whimp
XLBet.ATS – ArcadioN, FaggaN, Friis, trace & wazorN
SK Gaming – allen, RobbaN, walle, zet & Tentpole
fnatic – Archi, cArn, dsn, f0rest & ins
lanklan – GeT_RiGhT, kHRYSTAL, qp, threat & FYRR73
Playzone.se – pronax, danne, pita, BARBARR & xeron
GamePlay – contE, naSu, ruuit, tihOp & plastE
HaHa – lurppis, barrack, JiGetus, Shiri, toNppa & Twista
XpreZ – noLA, REAL, syrtekz, elemeNt & prb
Playzone.no – Vertigo, jokki, mikkis, NeverLast & RashiE

The first playweek will start tomorrow, teams have until the coming Sunday to schedule their matches. The matcups for playweek 1 are:

mTw vs. Playzone.no
SK Gaming vs. XLBet.ATS
fnatic vs. XpreZ
GamePlay vs. HaHa
lanklan vs. Playzone.se

The season will have a total of nine playweeks, including Intel Friday Night Game (being played 16th of January 2009), which match is yet to be determined. The prize purse for the first EPS Scandinavia season is split up as follows:

1. 7.500€
2. 5.000€
3. 2.000€
4. 1.000€

Win bonus - 50€
iFNG win bonus - 1.000€

The four best teams of the season will be advancing to the LAN-finals, being played 7-8th of February 2009 in Copenhagen.

HLTV.org will be providing full coverage of the first ever EPS Scandinavia, meaning HLTV, demos, scorebots, results, standings and a lot more.