The Esports Club Gauntlet Valorant Tournament unveils format and prize pool distribution

The Esports Club has unveiled the format for the upcoming TEC Gauntlet Valorant Tournament. Four seasons spanning over the next eight months promises to make it the biggest Valorant event in the region.

The Esports Club is one of the most well known esports organizers of India. After the immense success of the TEC Valorant Challenger Series and the TEC Valorant Invitational Series, The Esports Club has now announced the TEC Gauntlet Valorant Series. It is set to be a four-season-long tournament with a massive collective prize pool of ₹52 Lakh.

The format of TEC Gauntlet Valorant Series was recently unveiled, along with the prize pool breakdown.

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The Esports Club Gauntlet Valorant Tournament format

The TEC Gauntlet Tournament consists of four seasons taking place over eight months. The time frame for each season is as follows:

the 4 seasons of TEC Gaunt Valorant Series (Image by The Esports Club)

TEC Gauntlet Season I - June 2021, July 2021

TEC Gauntlet Season II - August 2021, September 2021

TEC Gauntlet Season III - October 2021, November 2021

TEC Gauntlet Season IV - December 2021, January 2022

Ishaan Arya, the Co-Founder of The Esports Club said:

We've created this format to help provide the Valorant Esports ecosystem a long-term roadmap so that players and teams can really put their heads down and concentrate on their personal and organizational development. This is a much needed competitive event that is crucial for development of Valorant esports in our region.

TEC Gauntlet is intended to provide players at all tiers a sort of roadmap for their aspirations with open amateur qualifiers, regular sustained rewards through each the season and of course the massive rewards for placing top 5 in the play offs!

Each season of TEC Gauntlet will be divided into 4 sections as follows:

TEC Gaunt Valorant Series overall prize pool (Image by The Esports Club)

TEC Gaunt Valorant Series season wise prize pool (Image by The Esports Club)

Open Qualifier

Each season, the TEC Gauntlet will kick off with an open qualifier, where 256 teams will face off in a single elimination bracket to qualify for the Regular Season. While the top 16 teams from the first open qualifier will qualify for TEC Gauntlet Season I, only the top 4 teams will qualify from the next three open qualifiers for Season II, Season III, and Season IV respectively.

The winner of Each Open Qualifier will receive ₹ 20,000/- and the runner up will receive ₹ 5,000/-, ringing the total of the Open Qualifier prize pool to ₹ 25,000/-.

Regular Season

The top 16 teams will be sorted into two groups, where the 8 teams of a group will face each other in a best-of-three, round robin format. After the end of the Regular season, the top 4 teams of each group will qualify for the playoff stage, while the bottom 2 teams of each group will be knocked out.

The 5th and 6th teams of each group will not qualify for the playoffs, but will qualify to compete at the TEC Gauntlet next season, along with the rest of the group, with the exception of the bottom two.

The 12 teams - top 6 from the two groups - will qualify for the next season of TEC Gauntlet, where they will be joined by the top 4 teams of the Open Qualifier. This format of selecting the 16 teams for a season of TEC Gauntlet will be followed each time, except for Season 1.

The top 4 teams of each group will receive ₹ 25,000/- and the 5th and 6th teams of each group will receive ₹ 12,500/-. The total prize pool of Regular Season of TEC Gauntlet is ₹ 2,50,000/- for the two groups.

All Star

The TEC Gauntlet All-Star will be a star-studded affier that will serve as a break between the high octane Regular Season and the playoffs of the TEC Gauntlet. The Esports Club hasn’t revealed any further details regarding this event.

Playoffs

The top 4 teams of the two groups on the Regular Season will qualify for the Playoffs, where the 8 teams will face off in a double elimination bracket. All of the matches leading up to the semifinals will be Best of three, and the finals will be best of five.

The prize distribution of the TEC Gauntlet Playoffs is as follows:

1st ₹ 5,00,000/-

2nd ₹ 2,50,000/-

3rd ₹ 1,00,000/-

4th ₹ 50,000/-

5th ₹ 25,000/-

Teams can already register for the open qualifier on The Esports Club website. With a packed format and a massive collective prize pool, The Esports Club Gauntlet Valorant Tournament is certainly going to be one of the biggest Valorant events in the region.