Just a few minutes ago, the organizers of the Vietnam Championship Series (VCS) officially announced the establishment of the VCS Winter 2021 tournament:
[VCS WINTER 2021 TOURNAMENT ANNOUNCEMENT]
As mentioned in the previous announcement (Announcement about the VCS tournament plan on August 15, 2021), we confirm that the VCS Winter 2021 tournament will commence in the middle of November 2021.
The VCS Winter 2021 will include the top 8 teams of League of Legends in Vietnam: GAM Esports, Saigon Buffalo, Cerberus Esports, Team Secret, SBTC Esports, Team Flash, Burst The Sky, and Luxury Esports.
After gathering feedback from the teams, the competition format of VCS Winter will be relatively similar to previous seasons, specifically:
– In the group stage, teams will compete in a Bo3 format with 2 rounds of home and away matches.
– The top 4 teams from the group stage will advance to the playoffs.
– The playoff matches will be played in a Bo5 format to determine the champion.
The tournament is expected to take place from November 16 to December 31. Due to the short duration of the tournament, teams will compete continuously from Tuesday to Sunday each week.
All matches from the group stage to the finals will be streamed live on the VETV7 channel, with broadcast times expected from 16:00 to 21:00. Detailed match schedules for the teams will be updated in our subsequent announcements.
The total prize pool for VCS Winter includes 1.2 billion VND, along with a portion of the prize money allocated from Worlds 2021. We will provide specific updates as soon as we receive official information from our partners.
Thus, after many rumors, the establishment of VCS Winter 2021 has been officially confirmed. In addition to the tournament’s timing, this year’s VCS Winter will have some notable differences as follows:
– Tournament duration shortened to only half of the usual time: Instead of lasting for 3 months, VCS Winter 2021 will only last for a month and a half and will conclude before the end of 2021. Therefore, teams will have to compete with a relatively tight schedule, doubling the number of matches each week compared to usual.
– Prize money: VCS Winter will have a total prize pool of 1.2 billion VND. Additionally, according to the announcement from the organizers, this tournament will also receive additional prize money from Worlds 2021 (for 2 slots from VCS). Based on the estimated prize money from Worlds 2020, this amount is likely to be around 135,540 USD, which is approximately 3.1 billion VND.
The question arises as to how the tournament organizers will handle this prize money. According to the announcement on the Fanpage, it is likely that the 3.1 billion VND will be combined into the total prize pool of the tournament, meaning that the prize money for VCS Winter 2021 could reach up to 4.3 billion VND, and will be distributed equally among all 8 participating teams based on their performance.
Another issue to note is that VCS Winter 2021 will commence right after the transfer market opens (around November 15), and many players will have their contracts with their respective teams expire. Therefore, this is likely to be a tournament filled with personnel chaos and developments.