HAVU have been announced as the replacement team for SKADE at the FLASHPOINT Season 1 LAN Qualifiers due to the latter side’s failure to acquire the proper visas to travel to the United States.

The announcement surfaced on Saturday, February 29, when Denislav “dennyslaw” Dimitrov took to social media to explain the situation.

SKADE were initially advised by their legal counsel to apply for B1/B2 visas. They actually needed P1 visas, for which the Bulgarian side no longer had enough time to apply.

“It sucks that an officer’s mistake can destroy such an opportunity for a young team. With such a short amount of time, we gave it our all and tried everything that can be done even though the odds were against us,” said dennyslaw.

Despite the team’s and organisers’ attempts to rectify the situation, SKADE have been unsuccessful in their bid to obtain the needed documentation to travel to Los Angeles and compete in what might have been one of the biggest events in the organisation’s history.

“Last few days we barely slept just to try negotiating urgent interviews, refilling documents and stuff, trying to figure out how we can get express delivery for the visas so we catch our flights and etc.,” added dennyslaw.

“Sadly there is nothing we can do even though the lawyers we reached proved that the law shows we were right about choosing the b1/b2 category for a tournament that includes prize money and there was nothing wrong with the documentation at all.”

In the same post, dennyslaw also unveiled SKADE will be replaced by HAVU at the Los Angeles event, although the Finnish side placed only seventh-eighth at the European qualifiers. HAVU will be one of four CS:GO esports teams to represent the European region, besides AVEZ, Copenhagen Flames and BIG.

Lasse “ZOREE” Uronen and his squad will be seeded into Group B with Copenhagen Flames, Chaos Esports Club and Redemption POA. Their opening match at the FLASHPOINT qualifiers will be played on Tuesday, March 3 when they face off against Chaos Esports Club.

The qualifiers for the inaugural season of FLASHPOINT will run from March 3-5, featuring USD $64,000 in the prize pool as well as two tickets to the main event. There, 12 teams will duke it out for the largest slice of $1 million and the title of Season 1 FLASHPOINT champions.