IEM Rio 2023 results & highlights

This past weekend,  CS:GO esports fans were in for a treat as we saw the IEM Rio 2023 event come to an exciting conclusion, especially if you are a fan of “the Chosen One”, aka Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut and Team Vitality. Here’s what went down.

IEM Rio 2023 results

We saw 16 of the best CS:GO esports teams in the world compete in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, at the Jeunesse Arena, for their share of the $250,000 prize pool. At the current Dollar to Rand exchange rate, that’s roughly R4.5 million. The winner also gets a direct invite to the prestigious IEM Cologne 2023 later this year.

Check out our video below featuring the highlights and what went down during the playoffs of IEM Rio 2023, or continue reading.

Following a rather exciting group stage, six teams emerged for the single-elimination bracket playoffs. Here, we saw Danish powerhouse Heroic reverse sweep the home crowd favourites, FURIA, crushing the hopes of Brazillian CS:GO esports fans. Then, Heroic went on to shock Na’Vi with a 2-0, with the first map going into double overtime to make it to the grand final of IEM Rio 2023.

Team Vitality got to the grand final by smacking down German squad BIG with a convincing 2-0, before reverse-sweeping Cloud9, with their first map also going into Overtime. Then, in the best-of-three grand finals of the IEM Rio 2023 event, we saw Vitality and the tournament MVP (in our opinion), Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut, alongside his team, come out swinging.

On Vitality’s map pick, Vertigo, they managed to beat Heroic 16-13, with the map remaining close throughout. On Heroic’s map pick, Inferno, Vitality did not take their foot off the gas, smacking Heroic down 16-12 to claim the title of IEM Rio 2023 champions, the $100,000 first-place prize, and punched their ticket to IEM Cologne 2023.

Header image via ESL.