Epic Announces Fortnite Tournament to be played at Australian Open
| Tags: Fortnite
| Author Jacob Shrader
Recently, Epic Games has announced that they will be hosting a Fortnite Tournament at the 2019 Australian Open. Entitled the Summer Smash Event, the event follows the mold of past Open events, as players have already sent in there applications to reserve their spot in the tournament. Along with a solos tournament, the Summer Smash Event will feature a duos style tournament that will feature talented content creators, TV personalities and professional athletes.
The combined prize pool for the solos tournament will be $500,000, with the winner taking home $100,00 and the second and third place finishers taking home $50,000 each. The winner of the Pro-am duos tournament will be awarded money to donate to the charity of their choice, as Epic Games has done in the last few open events.
Given the success of their last open tournament, the Korea Open, it is no surprise Epic Games has returned with another installment.
At the Korea Open, True and KittyPlays, two of the premier Fortnite twitch streamers ended up walking away as the victors of the duos section of the event, winning a whopping $1,000,000 between them. The event was awesome, as the integration of a few famous streamers among the numerous Korean boys and girls who signed up to play provided a unique type of entertainment unlike anything seen at past Fortnite tournaments held in the U.S.
As interesting as the gameplay and tournament were, the contrast between the Koreans and the Americans, especially the extremely high regard all of the amateur gamers had for the professional streamers, was what made the tournament so much fun to watch. As soon as Tfue arrived at the venue, he was swarmed by all of his Korean fans who were getting to see him in person for the first time. One amateur Korean player event registered for the tournament under the name FaZe Tfueo_o. Tfue introduced himself to his imposter, and while in obvious shock that he was meeting his idol, managed to work out the words “I'm your fan” to Tfue.
On stream, Tfue admitted that he has again been invited to participate in the Australian Open. However, he is not sure whether he will attend as it is a lot of travel and potentially does not fit his schedule or will take him away from his stream for too long. He is the only player that we know of who has officially been asked to play. However, a list of participants should be released closer to the event.
The Summer Smash Event will take place during the last weekend of the Australian Open during the two days starting on January 26th. Unlike past open tournaments, Players will be forced to use the peripherals provided, something that has caused problems in the past as players prefer their own gear.
More information will be provided as we move closer to the actual event. The tournaments viewing ability has not been made public yet, but it is safe to assume it will be streamed via twitch on multiple different channels.
Jacob 'kanyeshrayz' Shrader is an esports writer who focuses on the competitive aspects of Call of Duty and Fortnite. He is a master prestige with over 40,000 EKIA in Black Ops 4 and has hundreds of combined wins in Fortnite. You can learn more about Jacob on our About page.