Intel partners with the International Olympic Committee for the first Intel World Open esports tournament

A $500,000 Rocket League and Street Fighter V tournament will be hosted in Tokyo ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games and will feature a live audience.

The event will take place from July 22nd to 24th 2020 right before the Summer Olympics. It means that Tokyo will receive both Olympic athletes and pro gamers in the same week. The tournament will be held in partnership with Psyonix and Epic games, the developers of both the games which are hosted and each tournament is designed to have a $250,000 prize pool amounting to a grand total of $500,000.

image source: CCN.com

It will be a delight for the people of Tokyo to see Street Fighter, the most popular game in their part of the world to be hosted on such a grand scale and the choice of games to be hosted also was heavily influenced to appeal to the audience.

The national qualifiers are set to begin in March 2020 as 12 countries were pre selected to form teams. There is no limit on participants but four players will be selected through the qualifiers. If you aren’t a part of the pre-selected countries, regional qualifiers will be held to select eight more teams. A total of 20 teams will proceed to the semi-finals in Katowice and the Japanese national team will wait in Tokyo to be joined by the 7 qualifying teams.

Even though is supported by the International Olympic Committee, it is not an official Olympic event. That right will belong to to the official 2019 Southeast Asian Games which will feature 5 different games will be played as medal events

stay tuned for more exciting updates!