RALEIGH, N.C. — After seven months of competition and qualifiers, the eyes of the eBaseball world will be on Raleigh, North Carolina, this weekend, as two major tournaments get underway in WBSC eBASEBALL™: POWER PROS.
The ePremier12 USA Finals and the Opening Round of the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) HUGAN ePremier12 2024 will take place October 25-27 at the North Carolina State University Gaming and Esports Lab in Raleigh, located at the Hunt Library on the University’s campus. The USA Finals will take place on October 25, while the Opening Round will take place on October 26 and 27.
Friday’s USA Finals, which will begin at 11 a.m. ET, will feature the top six players in WBSC eBASEBALL™: POWER PROS from the United States battling it out for the final three spots in the Opening Round of the ePremier12.
The six competitors qualified via two routes. The first two, yg and Compass, qualified via their respective performances in this summer’s USA eBaseball™ Power League, with yg winning the regular season title and Compass winning the Summit Series title in the playoffs. The remaining four, JonsCopyright, KangGang, Emmdotfrisk and SlimeFall, all qualified by way of finishing as the top four United States players in September’s USA eBaseball™ Cup, an online competition in WBSC eBASEBALL™: POWER PROS.
Competition will begin with round-robin play between the six competitors, who will be broken up into two pools of three and play each of the other competitors in their group. How they finish determines how the afternoon bracket play will be set up, with the top players in the group getting a bye to the second round. The first round of bracket play will see the second-place finishers from each group face off against the third-place finishers from the opposite group, with the winners moving on to play the top seeds and the losers being eliminated.
Whoever wins the second-round matchups will move on to the gold medal game and automatically qualify for the ePremier12, while the losers will play in a bronze medal game, with the winner qualifying for the ePremier12. All games, outside of the gold medal and bronze medal games, will be three innings long, while the championship and third place games will be five innings long.
yg is the defending champion of the USA Finals, defeating Olympic Esports Series 2023 participant KangGang in last year’s finals to qualify for the eBaseball Series World Finals 2023 in Lausanne, Switzerland, back in March. All four players who competed in the 2023 USA eBaseball™ Finals – Compass, KangGang, yg, and Emmdotfrisk – return for the second straight year to the USA Finals, while JonsCopyright and SlimeFall are newcomers to the Finals.
The three qualifiers from the USA Finals will join Mexico champion Ben Zen, European champion MSQA, and Wild Card player Dashu of Chinese Taipei in Group A action in the Opening Round of the WBSC HUGAN ePremier12. Ben Zen qualified by being crowned champion in the ePremier12 Mexico Finals back in September, MSQA qualified by being crowned champion in the ePremier12 Europe Finals earlier this month, and Dashu qualified as a wild card by finishing third in September’s ePremier12 Chinese Taipei Finals.
Much like the USA Finals, Saturday’s action, which starts at 1:05 p.m. ET, will feature the six players divided into two pools and playing a round-robin phase against each player in their pool. How they finish determines how Sunday’s bracket play will be set up. Sunday’s action, which will begin at 2:15 p.m. ET, will start with the second-place finishers from each group facing off against the third-place finishers from the opposite group, with the winners moving on to play the top seeds and the losers being eliminated. Whoever wins the two matchups in the second round will qualify for the ePremier12 Super Round and Finals, which will take place in Tokyo, Japan, on November 21-23.
Group B will take place on November 2-3 in New Taipei City, Taiwan, and will feature the other six participants: SHORA, NEGRAY, Tomokun, CMWANG, SHE SHE, and DOIYA.
All games in the ePremier12 Opening Round will be contested over five innings. All action from Friday through Sunday in both tournaments will be open to the public to watch, and will also be streamed on USA Baseball’s YouTube channel and WBSC’s YouTube channel.
