Paris – March 11th, 2005: The Electronic Sports World Cup 2005 Grand Final will be organized from Wednesday 6th July to Sunday 10th July 2005, in the most prestigious venue of France, in Paris: “The Carrousel of theLouvre” – with the support of Nvidia as Main and Worldwide Partner. During the ESWC Grand Final, designed as a traditional sport event and produced as a show for television, 60 major matches will be played on 3 stages – including a main hall with 2000 seats for spectators.

The ESWC Organizing Committee announced today the opening of the officialwebsite dedicated to the competition and the worldwide preliminaries.

URL: http://www.esworldcup.com

Three main disciplines have been chosen: Counter-Strike v1.6, Warcraft III TFT, and Pro Evolution Soccer 4. In order to select players and teams to the Grand Final, the ESWC Organizing Committee has closed partnerships with professional organisations of electronic sports in more than 40 countries. We are proud to announce today the first list of the ESWC 2005 Preliminaries operating companies. This list is not definitive and will be update until June – as for the countries representation as for the national slots granted per countries and disciplines.

URL: http://www.esworldcup.com/2005/main.php?act=preliminaries&topic=strategic_partners

Several major sporting projects are under finalisation and will be announced soon as the North American qualifiers, the German qualifiers and the Russian qualifiers.

Note about the ESWC Preliminaries system

The ESWC Organizing Committee (LIGARENA) is a company based in France, Europe. LIGARENA produce directly the ESWC Grand Final event early July each year and supervise the ESWC international preliminaries. Each one of the national qualifiers is managed by a national operator who has rights and obligations written in a contract of licence signed with LIGARENA. Basically, a national preliminary allows the selection of 1 Counter-Strike team, 1 to 3 Warcraft players and 1 to 3 Pro Evolution Soccer players per country. In the course of the financial set-up of the national operations,this model is adjusted to the budget of the national organizer. One of the main specified points in the licence agreement is that the qualified players or teams are invited to participate in the Grand Final with their travel expenses covered by the national organizer. This model could also be adjusted by LIGARENA regarding the sporting aspect by the authorization of participation of a second Counter-Strike team for some countries.

Note about the ESWC Masters

The method of participation to the Masters tournaments of the Grand Final(Counter-Strike Women – Gran Turismo 4 – Quake 3 – Unreal Tournament 2004) will be a combination between national qualifiers and direct selections of the ESWC Organizing Committee after analysis of all
requests sent through a candidate form application process. All information concerning the selection of the players and teams for the will be announced in April.