Nigma Galaxy has become the first team to win ESL Impact, ESL’s all-female Counter-Strike: Global Offensive circuit.
The Euorpean all-female team reverse-swept Brazil’s FURIA in the grand finals in Dallas over the weekend. While Nigma Galaxy started the grand finals in a rough spot against their Brazilian opponents, the focused squad ultimately came back stronger to win the event. Nigma Galaxy also beat BIG EQUIPA in the semifinals on its journey to the top.
The MVP was Ana “ANa” Dumbrava, the team’s AWPer. The pro player had an average 1.36 rating throughout the eight maps played. ANa played effectively with her Nigma Galaxy teammates Alexandra “twenty3” Timonina, Ksenia “vilga” Klyuenkova, Viktoria “tory” Kazieva, and Katrina “Kat” Vaskova.
Nigma Galaxy took home a whopping $50K of the $123K total prize pool.
This was the first season of ESL Impact, featuring the top eight all-female CSO teams from around the world facing off in Dallas for the finals. There were qualifiers held beforehand in Europe, North America, South America, South Africa, and Oceania. Nigma Galaxy, BIG EQUIPA, FURIA, and CLG Red made the ESL Impact playoffs.
CSGO is a bit behind when it comes to inclusivity, making this all-female tournament an important step for the scene. Viewership for women’s CSGO competitions remains a question. Live viewers tuned in most heavily for a semifinals matchup between CLG Red and Furia. On YouTube, the grand finals match only has a few thousand views. Compared to other CSGO touranment finals, this is quite low.
The all-female circuit was announced as part of ESL’s #GGFORALL initiative at the end of 2021.
“We strive to achieve an environment where discrimination and toxicity is removed,” ESL Gaming said. “We believe in a world where everyone has the right to enjoy the games they love ,the right to play, to participate, and to progress.”
SVP people and culture at ESL Gaming Roberta Hernandez added that ESL was “providing an infrastructure [for women] equal to their male counterparts.”
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