Virtual Bundesliga: SV Werder Bremen defends VBL Club Championship title
- Playoffs on 7 and 8 March
- Grand Final on 28 and 29 March at Dock.One in Cologne
- Tickets for the Grand Final now available
28 February 2020 – SV Werder Bremen retained its title as German club champion in eFootball on Thursday evening. The North German club won its last match against Hertha BSC 7:1 to defend its title with a lead of three points over SpVgg Greuther Fürth. Viewers of ProSieben MAXX saw Bremen players Michael “MegaBit” Bittner and Erhan “DrErhano” Kayman lift the championship trophy following the last match of the season. The redesigned trophy, which will be handed on to the new winner every year, was presented by Andreas Heyden, EVP Digital Innovations of the DFL Group.
Despite missing out on the title SpVgg Greuther Fürth´s second place in the final table behind Werder Bremen means the club has qualified directly for the VBL Grand Final on 28 and 29 March at Dock.One in Cologne. Bayer 04 Leverkusen, Borussia Mönchengladbach, VfL Wolfsburg and VfL Bochum 1848 also made it through to the Grand Final directly.
The clubs who finished the season in seventh to 16th place still have one more opportunity to qualify via the VBL Playoffs, which will be played online on 7 and 8 March. A total of 128 participants will take part in the Playoffs and compete for the highly sought-after spots in the VBL Grand Final in a Swiss-system tournament. As during the whole season, the Playoffs will be played in 85 mode, with all players and teams having the same aggregated player rating.
108 players have already qualified via the VBL Open, a free online mode that was open to all FIFA 20 players until the end of January. The VBL Open saw a new record of 130,000 participants, the highest number since the competition was scaled back from all of the German-speaking countries to just Germany. The qualifiers include players such as Niklas “NRaseck 7” Raseck, Philipp “Eisvogel_7” Schermer and the reigning world champion, Mohammed “MoAuba” Harkous, who was a finalist in last year’s VBL Grand Final.
The final VBL Club Championship table for 2019/20 is available here.
The Playoffs will be followed by the VBL Grand Final in Cologne on 28 and 29 March. The twelve best players on each console will compete to succeed Michael “MegaBit” Bittner as German champion in eFootball and win a share of the €45,000 prize pot. The participants in the Grand Final will include two players from each of the top six clubs in the final VBL Club Championship table. The matches will be played in FIFA Ultimate Team mode, with players able to select their teams from all of the Bundesliga clubs.
The group phase of the VBL Grand Final on the Saturday can be attended live free of charge, with tickets available to purchase for the knockout phase and the final matches on the Sunday. Tickets for the Sunday are available here. As in the previous year, part of the semi-final and the cross-console final will be broadcast live on ProSieben MAXX between 17:20 and 20:15 CET. In addition to a live stream on ran eSports, there will again be an international stream.
Qualified for the Grand Final: Werder Bremen, SpVgg Greuther Fürth, Bayer 04 Leverkusen, Borussia Mönchengladbach, VfL Wolfsburg, VfL Bochum 1848
Qualified for the Playoffs: Hamburger SV, Hannover 96, Eintracht Frankfurt, 1. FC Köln, VfB Stuttgart, FC Schalke 04, RB Leipzig, 1. FSV Mainz 05, 1. FC Nürnberg, FC Augsburg
More information on the VBL Grand Final can be found at the following link: https://virtual.bundesliga.com/grand-final
More details about the VBL Playoffs and the VBL Grand Final will be announced at virtual.bundesliga.com as they become available. 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 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.
The global VBL International Series will also take place in 2020, with online and offline tournaments being held in numerous countries in order to find the best players from Asia and the Americas. The finalists will qualify for the VBL International Final in Germany in May.