Halo Championship Series
 |
|
| Sport | Halo |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2014 |
| Owner(s) | 343 Industries |
| No. of teams | 16 |
| Country | United States, Europe |
| Most recent champion(s) |
Counter Logic Gaming |
Halo Championship Series (HCS) is a professional Halo league sponsored by Microsoft and 343 Industries. It is governed by Electronic Sports League, more commonly referred to as ESL. Seasons 1 and 2 ran on Halo: The Master Chief Collection, specifically its remake of Halo 2. In August 2015 Microsoft announced it would be increasing the total prize pool of the HCS to $1 million USD, for the newly announced Halo World Championship, which will be the debut event for Halo 5: Guardians. This prize pool was later announced to be crowd-funded, which later resulted in Major League Gaming announcing that the prize pool had climbed to $2 million USD. Later that week, 343 announced that the prize pool was locked at $2.5 million USD. This was confirmed to give the winners, later announced to be Counter Logic Gaming, the largest single monetary prize in console eSports history.
HCS Season 1 took place from December 12, 2014 to March 8, 2015. There were a total of 12 official tournaments, five LANs and seven online. It featured a $100,000 USD prize pool. The European Gaming League organized a LAN event in London on February 22, 2015, with the winning team getting a wild card spot to the Season 1 Grand Finals.
Season 2 of the HCS features a $250,000 prize pool spread out over three offline events, seven online cups and one open online cup.
Included maps and modes:
Halo World Championship 2016 was the culminating event of the Halo World Championship 2016 season, taking place at Raleigh Studios Hollywood in Hollywood, California from March 18–20, 2016. Halo 5 was played in 4v4 competition. It featured the largest prize pool in console esports history, with a total of $2,500,000 USD on the line.
The Halo World Championship was announced on August 4, 2015 with a trailer shown during Microsoft's Gamescom showcase. With a prize pool of over $2,500,000 USD, there has never been a Halo tournament with higher stakes. It is also the first major tournament featuring invited teams from all regions of the world.
The prize pool was initially announced to be starting at $1,000,000, with possible increases from the purchase of REQ packs in Halo 5. On November 4, 2015, 343 announced that the prize pool had reached $1,500,000 through REQ pack crowdfunding, with the possibility of growing all the way until March.On November 19, the prize pool was confirmed to have hit $1,700,000. On December 3, MLG confirmed that it had reached $2,000,000. On February 19, during the pre-show for the MLG North American Regional Finals, Goldenboy and Benson confirmed that the prize pool had reached $2,500,000.
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