I went to the biggest esports tournament in Brazil and it’s better than Carnival
TOM Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege hosted one of the biggest esports events of the year this weekend.
The Six Invitational took place from February 23 to 25 in São Paulo, Brazil.
It’s the first major competitive shooting event in Brazil in five years, with a huge prize pool of $3 million.
According to video game developer Ubisoft, the 2024 Six Invitational was the most watched ever, peaking at 500,000 concurrent viewers across all platforms.
Brazilian team w7m esports achieved a dramatic victory in front of their home crowd at the sold-out Ginásio do Ibirapuera Stadium.
They found themselves behind favorites FaZe Clan, who had a 6-1 lead entering the final map of the series.
W7m esports made an incredible comeback by winning seven straight rounds and sending the stadium into a frenzy.
They won the $1 million grand prize and took home the trophy: a large sledgehammer inspired by one of the game’s characters, Sledge.
The story of the evening was about competing twins Thiago and Felipe Ferreira, known by the nameplates of Handy and Nade.
They were on competing teams, resulting in an epic brother-versus-brother clash on home turf.
It was similar to Super Bowl 58 earlier this month, in which Travis Kelce’s Kansas City Chiefs defeated his brother Jason Kelce’s San Francisco 49ers.
Maxime Vial, director of Rainbow Six Siege esports, says:
“We’ve done two events in Brazil for Siege in the past, and I’m blown away every time.
“We know that every local audience is super passionate, but Brazilians tend to take it to the next level.”
Scottish esports player Jack ‘Doki’ Robertson came fourth with his team G2 Esports.
He prefers to play Siege in a live setting and admits that he feeds off the audience’s negativity.
“For example, today the crowd was really against us, but every time we did something good, they were all silent.”
Robertson’s team may have finished fourth, but he enjoyed the event regardless.
‘I will take this memory with me to the grave. Playing on a stage flooded with thousands of people is insane.”
Rainbow Six Siege continues to grow, with approximately 57,000 concurrent players in the last 30 days.
That’s compared to about 41,000 concurrent players in February 2023, according to Steam Charts.
If you want to read more about esports, go behind the scenes at the world’s largest CS tournament.
Written by Griff Griffin on behalf of GLHF.
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