eFootball: VBL Grand Final will take place on 11 and 12 May in Berlin

15 April 2019 – The final of the TAG Heuer Virtual Bundesliga (VBL) will take place on 11 and 12 May in Berlin. At the Westhafen Event & Convention Center, DFL Deutsche Fußball Liga and EA SPORTS will host the VBL Grand Final, in which the German champion will be selected from the 24 best individual players in eFootball. The VBL Grand Final will be open to spectators on both days of the event. In addition, a live stream will be available to watch on the VBL website virtual.bundesliga.com throughout the tournament.

The VBL Grand Final marks the end of the 2018-19 VBL season. SV Werder Bremen already became the first German eFootball club champion in March. Bremen triumphed in the team competition VBL Club Championship that was recently founded by the DFL and EA SPORTS. The competition is open to clubs from the Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2 and has been running since the start of this season.

The VBL Club Championship also allowed participants from professional clubs to qualify for the VBL Grand Final: Two players from each team that finished among the top six places in the final table of the competition are allowed to take part in the final tournament. In addition to these twelve participants, twelve other eFootballers have qualified through the VBL Playoffs, where players whose club reached places 7–16 in the VBL Club Championship and individual players who had qualified through the VBL Open online qualifier competed head to head against each other.

The VBL is already coming to the end of its seventh season in Berlin. The platform was launched in 2012 by the DFL and EA SPORTS. At the time, the VBL was the first eFootball competition for a professional league to be directly integrated into the EA SPORTS FIFA game series. The VBL has enjoyed a large popularity since its launch with more than 120,000 participants recently taking part alone in Germany. For more information and the latest news about the VBL Grand Final, please visit www.virtual.bundesliga.com and the VBL’s YouTube and Twitter pages.

The 24 participants at a glance

Qualified via VBL Club Championship & VBL Playoffs:

Mohammed ‘MoAuba’ Harkous (SV Werder Bremen), Michael ‘MegaBit’ Bittner (SV Werder Bremen), Marcel ‘Marlut’ Lutz (VfB Stuttgart), Erhan ‘Dr. Erhano’ Kayman (VfB Stuttgart), Yannick ‘BMG Jeffry95’ Reiners (Borussia Mönchengladbach), Michael ‘BMG Phenomeno’ Gherman (Borussia Mönchengladbach), Francesco ‘Czudemi’ Morgana (SpVgg Greuther Fürth), Christian ‘xImpact’ Judt (SpVgg Greuther Fürth), Marco ‘H96_It4chi’ Becker (Hannover 96), Christoph ‘H96_Chrissi’ Strietzel (Hannover 96), Tim ‘Tim Latka’ Schwartmann (FC Schalke 04), Philipp ‘Eisvogel’ Schermer (FC Schalke 04), Maik ‘Sn0wGoogles’ Kubitzki (Eintracht Frankfurt), Alexander ‘VFL-Xander’ Steinmetz (VfL Bochum), Yannic ‘Yannic0109’ Bederke (FC Augsburg) and Riad ‘itsRiaad’ Fazlija (VfL Wolfsburg).   

Qualified via VBL Open & VBL Playoffs:

Niklas ‘NRaseck7’ Raseck, Antonio ‘Antonio Radelja’ Radelja, Marcel ‘DonChap28’ Deutscher, Matthias ‘STYLO’ Hietsch,  Richard ‘Der_Gaucho10’ Hormes, Danny ‘Danny Troughton’ Troughton, Leon ‘cl23_leon’ Krasniqi and Leon ‘blackarrow889’ Aussieker.