BIG and MAD Lions through to DreamHack Leipzig semifinals

DreamHack Open Leipzig has seen its first two CS:GO teams make it through the group stage and into the semifinals in a strong start for the 2020 season.

Following roster changes at the start of the year, the new BIG lineup made their debut in front of a home crowd.

Victories over the new Virtus.pro and Renegades teams were all BIG needed to secure first place in Group A, with Johannes "tabseN" Wodarz

Group B saw multiple Danish teams in action, with North, MAD Lions and Heroic all vying for a spot in the playoffs against hometown hopefuls Sprout.

MAD Lions roared their way into the semifinal with an impressive victory over former Danish kings of the jungle North on Mirage in the winners' match.

Both Lucas "Bubzkji" Andersen and Fredrik "roeJ" Jørgensen now sit as the best and third-best performers in Leipzig after the first day of play.

Virtus.pro will play Cloud9 while Sprout face Heroic in the Group A and Group B elimination matches to avoid becoming the first teams sent home.

The rest of the matches from DreamHack Open Leizpig will be broadcast on Twitch from 10:00 GMT (11:00 CET / 02:00 PST) on 25th January.

DreamLeague Season 13, Dota 2's Major, will also be taking place at the gaming festival as well as the only European Smash Circuit event in Germany and Farming Simulator League competition.

DreamHack Leipzig marks the first stop in the ESL Pro Tour calendar for 2020, which sees ESL and DreamHack unite all tournaments into a single circuit for the year culminating in the biggest tournaments of the year outside of the Majors - IEM Katowice and ESL One Cologne.

A similar system will also be put into place this year for StarCraft II and WarCraft III: Reforged, taking over Blizzard's involvement as a tournament organiser.