PGL Major Antwerp 2022: FaZe Clan, the first international champions and glitter stickers

PGL Major Antwerp 2022 was the first Counter-Strike Major in Belgium, and it ended with FaZe Clan beating the defending champions, Natus Vincere, in the final. HLTV called FaZe the first international lineup to win a Major: five players from five countries. Off the server, Antwerp brought back autographs for every player after Stockholm's playoff-only experiment, and replaced foil stickers with a new glitter finish.

The tournament

PGL ran its second Major in a row, six months after PGL Major Stockholm 2021. The event ran from May 9 to 22, 2022, with 24 teams that had qualified through Regional Major Ranking events in April. The format matched Stockholm's:

• Challengers Stage (May 9 to 12): 16 teams in a Swiss format, best-of-one except for best-of-three advancement and elimination matches.
• Legends Stage (May 14 to 17): the same format, with the eight Legends teams joining the top eight from the first stage.
• Champions Stage (May 19 to 22): an eight-team single-elimination bracket of best-of-three series.

The first two stages were played behind closed doors in a studio. Only the playoffs moved to the Antwerps Sportpaleis, in front of a crowd. The prize pool was $1 million, half of Stockholm's, with $500,000 for the winner. The map pool was unchanged: Ancient, Dust II, Inferno, Mirage, Nuke, Overpass and Vertigo.

Two rosters arrived under new names. After Russia's invasion of Ukraine, ESL barred organisations it said had ties to the Russian government from its events. Gambit's players were picked up by Cloud9 on April 24, 2022, and Virtus.pro's lineup competed as Outsiders. The IEM Rio 2022 article covers that team in detail.

FaZe also played without their head coach. Robert "RobbaN" Dahlström was serving a two-Major ban that Valve had issued in January 2021 over the coach spectator bug, which also kept him out of Stockholm, so FaZe registered Eddie as their coach for the event.

FaZe's run to the title

FaZe entered as Legends and reached the playoffs from the Legends Stage. In the quarter-finals they beat Ninjas in Pyjamas 2-1. Their semi-final against Team Spirit, who had come all the way from the Contenders group, went 2-0 but was anything but easy: FaZe won Mirage 16-13 and then Dust II 25-23 after three overtimes.

Natus Vincere reached the final by beating Heroic 2-1 and ENCE 2-0. A win would have made them back-to-back champions.

The final on May 22 lasted two maps:

HLTV gave its MVP medal to Håvard "rain" Nygaard, who had 30 kills on Nuke in the final. It was his first Major title, and also the first for Finn "karrigan" Andersen, whose FaZe team had lost the Boston 2018 final to Cloud9 (see the ELEAGUE Boston 2018 article).

According to Esports Charts, as reported by Dexerto, the final peaked at more than 2 million concurrent viewers, second only to Stockholm among CS:GO events at the time.

Stickers: glitter arrives, autographs return

Valve's announcement on May 3, 2022, "Rise and Shine", put team stickers and player autographs on sale together, noting that all the autographs were available this time. Both came in paper, glitter, holo and gold. Glitter was new, and foil disappeared from the Major set. Half of the proceeds went to the players, teams and organisations.

There were six capsules, one team capsule and one autograph capsule for each group. Each team capsule held the eight teams plus the PGL logo, and each autograph capsule held the 40 players of those eight teams.

On May 23, the day after the final, Valve released the Antwerp 2022 Champions Autograph Capsule with rain, karrigan, broky, ropz and Twistzz in all four finishes. These stickers carry "Champion" in their names, so a karrigan from this capsule reads "Sticker | karrigan (Gold, Champion) | Antwerp 2022", while his autograph from the Legends capsule has no Champion tag.

In August 2022 Valve said that over the previous 12 months, which covered both Stockholm and Antwerp, more than $70 million had been raised for organisations, teams and players. Our guide to Major sticker capsules explains how that money is split.

Souvenirs

Souvenir packages again came from the Viewer Pass. Every coin upgrade earned a Souvenir Token, up to three could be earned through the Pick'Em Challenge, and the "Viewer Pass + 3" started with three. Valve said Souvenirs "will feature gold stickers of the teams and map of the match you selected", the format Stockholm had introduced.

The seven packages used the same collections as Stockholm: Ancient, 2021 Dust 2, 2018 Inferno, 2021 Mirage, 2018 Nuke, Overpass and 2021 Vertigo. The rarest skins are Covert in four of them: the M4A1-S | Welcome to the Jungle (Ancient), AK-47 | Gold Arabesque (Dust II), AWP | Desert Hydra (Mirage) and M4A1-S | Imminent Danger (Vertigo). Our Souvenir packages guide explains how the system worked.

Collecting Antwerp 2022 items

• Read the full name. Antwerp items end in "Antwerp 2022". Check for "Champion" in an autograph's name, which marks the Champions capsule version.
• Know the finishes. Teams and players come in paper, glitter, holo and gold. There is no foil Antwerp sticker.
• Check Souvenir stickers. The gold team stickers and the gold map sticker identify the exact match, such as a Souvenir from the Inferno or Nuke map of the final.
• Search by sticker. The sticker filter on Buy lets you find weapons with a specific Antwerp 2022 sticker in a specific slot.

The next Major, the IEM Rio Major 2022, was played six months later in Brazil.

Sources

• PGL Major Antwerp 2022 — Liquipedia
• FaZe defeat NAVI 2-0 to win PGL Major Antwerp — HLTV.org
• rain claims PGL Major Antwerp MVP award — HLTV.org
• PGL Major Antwerp viewer's guide — HLTV.org
• Rise and Shine — Counter-Strike blog (Valve)
• PGL Antwerp 2022 Champions! — Counter-Strike blog (Valve)
• PGL Major Antwerp breaks 2 million viewer mark in FaZe vs NAVI final — Dexerto