VBL Grand Final 2020 to take place as online tournament
28 May 2020 – The VBL Grand Final 2020 will take place as an online tournament. The concluding tournament of the Virtual Bundesliga season, which was originally planned for March as an event attended in person, was initially suspended due to the spread of the coronavirus. Because the health of the players, spectators and other parties involved, of course, remains the top priority, the DFL Deutsche Fußball Liga and Electronic Arts will host the VBL Grand Final as an online tournament from 24 to 28 June. The matches will be played in ‘85 mode’, whereby all teams have the same player rating of 85 and therefore have essentially the same chances.
VBL Grand Final will span several days
The VBL Grand Final will begin at 6:00 p.m. on 24 June with the group phase. The 24 participants who have qualified will compete in two groups of six per console, with the four best players in a group securing their place in the next round.
The round-of-sixteen matches will get the knockout phase of the tournament under way at 6:00 p.m. on 25 June. The participants who qualify from a group will cross over and play against the qualifiers from the other group on their respective console. After the first and second legs, the quarter-final matches will take place that same evening in order to determine the participants in the respective semi-finals, which simultaneously represent the console finals. You can follow both the group and knockout phases on the live stream at esports.com and at https://virtual.bundesliga.de.
On 28 June, one day after the last match day of the 2019-20 Bundesliga season and before the last matches in Bundesliga 2, ProSieben MAXX will broadcast the finals on the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One as well as the subsequent cross-console final live on TV and on a live stream from 12:00 noon. In addition to the title of German champion, there is total prize money of €45,000 at stake at this year’s VBL Grand Final.
SV Werder Bremen defended VBL Club Championship title
Twelve of the total of 24 participants in this year’s VBL Grand Final qualified back in February via the VBL Club Championship. SV Werder Bremen not only celebrated its successful defence of the VBL Club Championship but also has the reigning German eFootball champion in its ranks in the shape of Michael ‘MegaBit’ Bittner.
His team colleague Erhan ‘DrErhano’ Kayman qualified for the VBL Grand Final alongside him. The remaining qualifiers come from the teams representing SpVgg Greuther Fürth, Bayer 04 Leverkusen, Borussia Mönchengladbach, VfL Wolfsburg and VfL Bochum 1848. These teams occupied the first six places in the final table of the VBL Club Championship and are therefore entitled to put forward one player per console for the finale. You can find all results, statistics and information concerning the VBL Club Championship, in which clubs from the Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2 compete, at the following link: https://virtual.bundesliga.com/en/club-championship
The other half of the starting field for the VBL Grand Final was decided on 8 March: 128 players battled for a place in the individual finale in the VBL Playoffs. Between November 2019 and January 2020, 108 players had qualified for the play-offs via the VBL Open mode in EA SPORTS FIFA 20, including last year’s finalist and reigning world champion Mohammed ‘MoAuba’ Harkous. In addition, two players from each of the teams that finished between 7th and 16th inclusive in the VBL Club Championship were able to hold out hope once more.
All results and tables from the play-offs can be found here.
More information on the VBL Grand Final will be provided at the following link as it becomes available: http://virtual.bundesliga.com/grand-final The VBL can also be followed on Twitter and YouTube.
About the Virtual Bundesliga
In 2012, the DFL became the first professional football league to have its own eSport competition when it launched the VBL in partnership with EA SPORTS. The VBL is still the only eSport competition of a professional football league to be directly integrated into the EA SPORTS FIFA game series. The VBL has enjoyed steadily growing popularity since its launch, with around 130,000 participants taking part last season. In 2018, the decision to launch the VBL Club Championship in addition to the VBL Open was taken in response to the increasing popularity of the VBL, the growing relevance of eSport in general and the DFL’s focus on football simulation games.