It has become known that Sprout, which currently includes players from Denmark, Germany and Luxembourg, will perform instead of the Chinese TYLOO at IEM Katowice. The team from China was forced to withdraw from the competition due to current anti-epidemic restrictions, which will prevent it from traveling to Poland despite the fact that it had previously qualified for the Road to Katowice Asia tournament.
Prior to this, the opportunity to take TYLOO's place was offered to Spirit and forZe in accordance with the replacement rules at IEM Katowice, however, both teams would not be able to participate in the competition due to visa problems. Therefore, in the end, a place in the tournament went to Sprout, which occupies the next position in the ESL Pro Tour ranking.
TYLOO last competed in Europe at IEM Winter 2021. Then the team failed to demonstrate significant success, and it finished the tournament at 13 – 16th place. Since then, its composition has changed: its former captain Hansel "BnTeT" returned to the team. Ferdinand, who has been performing in Europe and North America for the past two years. However, European viewers will not yet have the opportunity to see how much this will affect the game TYLOO.
Sprout will therefore join 15 other teams in the play-in stage and compete to be one of the eight participants who will advance to the main stage. Play-in for IEM Katowice will begin on February 15, and sixteen teams will take part in it, including Astralis, Fnatic, OG, Entropiq and others.
