Team Spirit sprint through Esports World Cup 2025 playoffs to claim the title undefeated

Esports World Cup 2025 came to a close with another clinical performance from Team Spirit, who claimed the championship title with a 3-0 sweep over the home town heroes, Team Falcons.

Finals day in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, started with a best-of-three decider series for the 3rd/4th place between PARIVISION and Tundra Esports. Although nobody expected it, that was also the most hyped series of the day. PARIVISION took a convincing 2-0 over Tundra, but they’ve done it by bringing a mid lane Pudge and a carry Meepo for the extra style points.

Team Spirit 3:0 Team Falcons

Through the playoffs stage, both grand finalists delivered quite a few epic games filled with clutch plays and unbelievable comebacks. That alone built a narrative of two teams who will fight tooth and nail for the EWC 2025 title, but instead, the fans got to witness an utterly one-sided series.

Team Spirit seemed to have figured out Falcons in their tiniest details and opened the finals with a draft that countered the home team in all aspects. They allowed Falcons to have the Nature’s Prophet carry and aligned a super mobile and aggressive draft for themselves to outpace their adversaries, while also keeping the Prophet in check.

To some extent, the first game was also a display of how a 5v5 game can be played as if it were 6v5. Magomed "Collapse" Khalilov got to play a Lycan with a 12-minute Helm of the Overlord completed and kept hunting Falcons in their jungle by sending an Ancient Black Dragon creep to gank alongside Yaroslav "Miposhka" Naidenov on Shadow Shaman.

While that happened through the early stage of the game, the mid stage was all an Illya "Yatoro" Mulyarchuk show, as he was one-shotting Falcons left and right on his Templar Assassin.

The grand finals turned from bad to worse for Falcons, who seemed not to have any answer to the perfectly coordinated and fully focused Team Spirit. Spirit had the overall last pick and recognised that they have “basically a free Medusa game,” as Coach Airat "Silent" Gaziev said in the post draft interview for the English broadcast.

Down 0-2, Falcons couldn’t pull themselves up and were outplaced, outclassed, and ultimately outplayed on home soil. Unfortunately for them the Esports World Cup ends with a second-place finish, for which they will surely look to take revenge in September, at The International 2025, the pinnacle Dota 2 tournament of the year.

Esports World Cup 2025 final standings

• 1st place: $1,000,000 & 1,000 Club Points - Team Spirit
• 2nd place: $500,000 & 750 Club Points - Team Falcons
• 3rd place: $300,000 & 500 Club Points - PARIVISION
• 4th place: $200,000 & 300 Club Points - Tundra Esports
• 5th-8th place: $125,000 & 200 Club Points - Gaimin Gladiators, Aurora Gaming, BetBoom Team, Team Liquid
• 9th-12th place: $75,000 - Xtreme Gaming, Team Yandex, Talon Esports, Natus Vincere
• 13th-16th place: $50,000 - Execration, Shopify Rebellion, HEROIC, Virtus.pro