Final of the VBL Club Championship by WOW 2023/24: All important information

The RB Leipzig team receives the German Club Champion trophy after the final of the VBL Club Championship 2023.
Photo: ESL/Elisabeth Daxl

19 March 2024 – In the WOW Virtual Bundesliga (VBL), the German Club Champion is about to be crowned: This year’s final of the VBL Club Championship by WOW will take place on March 23rd and 24th. The game is played within EA SPORTS FC™ 24, with the players meeting in front of a live audience.

The competition organised by the DFL is aimed at the eSport teams of the Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2 clubs and with 35 clubs in total,it is the largest field of participants so far. The first four final participants have already qualified via the final tables of the division phase: 1. FSV Mainz 05 and RB Leipzig from the South-East Division and SC Paderborn 07 and SV Werder Bremen from the North-West Division.

VBL Club Championship playoffs

Twelve other teams will fight it out in the playoffs of the VBL Club Championship for six remaining places in the final tournament on Friday, March 22nd: Bayer 04 Leverkusen, FC Augsburg, FC Bayern München, FC Hansa Rostock, FC Schalke 04, FC St. Pauli, Hamburger SV, Hertha BSC, SC Freiburg, TSG Hoffenheim, VfB Stuttgart and VfL Bochum 1848.

Information about all pairings and results of the final tournament as well as an overview of all teams and players can be found on the VBL website .

Jörg Höflich, Head of Virtual Bundesliga at the DFL, said: “A thrilling season is entering the finishing straight: Never before have so many clubs taken part in the VBL Club Championship by WOW, never before have so many clubs taken part in the final weekend. Thanks to the new format of the final, we are looking forward to even more top-class matches over the course of the weekend. It all starts on Friday with the play-offs, for which FC Bayern München and SC Freiburg, two teams competing in the VBL for the first time, have qualified alongside some long-standing VBL participants.”

Mode and times

In the final of the VBL Club Championship, the ten qualified clubs will initially compete in two groups. The top four in each group qualify for the quarter-finals and continue to play in the knockout mode from there.

  • On Friday, March 22nd, the playoff matches begin at 5 p.m.
  • On Saturday, March 23rd, the group phase kicks off at 11 a.m.
  • The last round of the group phase starts on Sunday at 10:30 a.m., followed by the matches in the knockout phase. The decisive matchup for the German championship begins at around 6:30 p.m.

The reigning German Club Champion is RB Leipzig. The team was successful for the second time at the 2023 final tournament and was able to defend the title it had won in 2022 at the previous year’s final.

Trophy Virtual Bundesliga Club Championship

All matches live on the VBL channels

All games in the playoffs and the final tournament will be shown live on the Twitch and TikTok profiles of the Virtual Bundesliga as well as on the Bundesliga YouTube channels.

Prize money and qualification for the further individual player competitions

The prize money pool in the VBL Club Championship will increase by more than 20 percent to 87,500 euros this season. In addition, players from the VBL Club Championship qualify for further competitions for the German Championship of the VBL among the individual players: The best five teams in the final tables in both divisions send two players each into the VBL Grand Final by WOW, the teams in places sixth to fourteenth will each represent two players in the playoffs of the VBL Open by WOW.

VBL Grand Final

In addition to the club competition, there is also the VBL Open as a competition part, whose in-game mode is open to eligible individual, German players to take part. Since November 2023, the 16 best participants each month have qualified for the VBL Open playoffs. Further qualifying places were also awarded through wildcard tournaments organised by influencers and clubs. In the playoffs they will face the VBL Club Championship qualifiers on April 6th and 7th. Whoever is successful in the VBL Open Playoffs moves into the VBL Grand Final. From April 19th to 21st, it’s not just about the title of German champion, but also about places to participate in the FC Pro World Championship and the eChampions League.

The winner of the VBL Grand Final 2023 and therefore the reigning German VBL Champion among individual players is Antonio Radelja from VfB Stuttgart.