The Brazilian crowd was pivotal for the South American teams during the second day of the Challengers Stage of IEM CS:GO Rio Major.
All seven maps played on stage on Tuesday went to at least 30 rounds, with 00 Nation and IHC’s game on Ancient being the only one to end on 30. In total, six remaining games went to overtime.
The home crowd was electrified during those games since in all of them they had a South American team involved. In 9z’s battle with Evil Geniuses, they had just two Brazilians to cheer for in Lucas “nqz” Soares and coach Rafael “zakk” Fernandes.
In the remaining three series, the audience had a Brazilian team to follow. FURIA took on OG, 00 Nation clashed with IHC, and Imperial Esports battled Cloud9 to close the day. Unfortunately for them, only FURIA finished with a victory, as both 00 Nation and Imperial were eliminated from the Major.
In comparison, none of the seven maps played off-stage featured a single full 30-round map or overtime.
9z also came out on top of their clash with Evil Geniuses. Their IGL, Maximiliano “max” Gonzalez, praised the crowd for the atmosphere they create, admitting that he’d love to play in this environment more often.
Not everything was perfect, however. ESL had to disable the minimap and x-ray for the fans in the arena after to the crowd yelled out positions to give their favorite teams an advantage on stage.
