The new Bleed Esports lineup will debut at the Riot Games ONE Pro Invitational as one of the four invited teams, the organizers have announced.
JAPAN – Bleed Esports have joined three other directly invited teams to complete the Yokohama event’s list, joining the ranks of Natus Vincere, ZETA DIVISION, and Detonation FocusMe – all of whom are part of the VCT International Leagues next season.
Set to take place from December 2–3 at K Arena Yokohama, the four invited teams will play in a round-robin group stage, each match being a best-of-one. This is a change from last year’s format, which featured teams like FNATIC, Paper Rex, and DRX taking on both hometown favorites and the returning participants ZETA and DFM.
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This year, all eyes will be on Bleed Esports as the newly-promoted Challengers team to the VCT Pacific League. With new members Jaccob “yay” Whiteaker and Javier “Egoist” Chua on board, the Singapore-based team will be looking to gain some much-needed confidence before they take on the Pacific’s best teams in Seoul next year.
The North American player, formerly of Envy/OpTic and Cloud9, joined the Singapore-based team on a free transfer in September following his short stint with Disguised. This will become yay’s first tournament against tier-one opposition once again since VCT LOCK//IN earlier in the year when he was still with Cloud9, However, things went sideways before the regular season began.
Meanwhile, NAVI are looking forward to a positive start with Ardis “ardiis” Svarenieks, reassembling the starting five that secured the Masters Copenhagen trophy last year when they were still competing together under the FunPlus Phoenix flag.
The list of teams also features two home teams in ZETA DIVISION and DetonatioN FocusMe, both making their return to Yokohama for the second consecutive year, having participated in the previous edition.
ZETA DIVISION have yet to announce their roster for the upcoming season. However, it is expected that these details will be revealed by the time they take part in the Riot Games ONE Pro Invitational since they are set to debut a month prior at Red Bull Home Ground Tokyo, which is scheduled for November 3-5.
Meanwhile, DetonatioN FocusMe will need to complete their roster with three additional players to round out their starting lineup, assuming they continue with Seo “Suggest” Jae-young and Yoshitaka “Anthem” Enomoto, who still remain under contract at the time of publication.
| Sat, December 2 | Sun, December 3 |
| 1 – BLD vs. NAVI | 1 – ZETA vs. BLD |
| 2 – DFM vs. NAVI | 2 – DFM vs. BLD |
| 3 – DFM vs. ZETA | 3 – ZETA vs. NAVI |
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Cover photo courtesy of Sebastian Stigsby/Riot Games
