After 15 extremely close and hard-fought games, HOWL Esports were crowned the Champions of the PUBG EMEA Championship: Spring! Congratulations to TheMad, RuerN, LAHZA and Scof1eld on their Championship win.

The top two teams - HOWL and ACEND - both finished with 122 total points after the night’s action. As per the Championship’s tie-breaker rules, HOWL were subsequently awarded the top spot due to their higher number of total placement points overall (points earned through placings in each match - as opposed to points earned through frags). As a result of their performance, both HOWL and ACEND will qualify for PUBG Global Series 1, which takes place later this Spring.

The Champion’s Journey

While most people would describe HOWL Esports as a dark horse pick prior to the finals, their stellar PEC: Spring performance was in many ways foreshadowed by their similarly excellent performance in Protality Season 6, in which they faced off against some of the best teams in the Middle East & Africa (MEA) and earned a strong second place, gaining them the PEC: Spring Lower Bracket Wildcard Slot.

Here’s something to note: as the best-performing MEA team in last year’s PCS7, HOWL also received a performance invite to the final round of the PEC: Spring Qualifiers. HOWL opted to use this invite instead, as a strong performance in the qualifiers could have sent them straight to the Upper Bracket Playoffs. Ultimately however, their performance in the Open Qualifiers would land them a spot in the Lower Bracket Playoffs.

Picking Up Momentum

HOWL’s Lower Bracket Playoffs run would set the stage for their performance in the Finals. In the Lower Bracket, they managed to triumph over some of the strongest teams from MEA and Europe alike, finishing the stage in first place - three points above BBL Esports.

While a standout performance doesn’t always translate into a winning Grand Finals run, HOWL proved the doubters wrong with an absolutely phenomenal performance throughout the Grand Finals. In particular, Day 1 saw the team put on a once-in-the lifetime performance, ending the day in first place with a staggering 71 points - for context, at that point ACEND was in second place with 49 points. While other teams narrowed the gap throughout the tournament, HOWL continued putting out high-kill games with excellent placements which enabled them to just barely hang on to their pole position until the end of the tournament.

And what an end to the event it was - coming into the final match, there was only 9 points separating the top five teams (ACEND, HOWL, FUT Esports, Exalt and FaZe Clan), so it truly could have been anyone’s tournament. Crucially, while HOWL didn’t end up with a Chicken Dinner in that final game, neither did any of those other top five teams – and after a high-kill game and a phenomenal final kill from RuerN in a split-second before succumbing to the blue zone, HOWL were able to just clinch their well-deserved Championship title.

What’s Next?
 

HOWL and ACEND will join the Global Partner Teams from EMEA (FaZe Clan, Twisted Minds and NAVI) for the first edition of the PUBG Global Series (PGS1) – our in-person global tournament which takes place later this Spring. Stay tuned over the next couple of weeks for more information about the location, format and teams taking part in PGS1!

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