The stage was set in Milan, Italy, where both Europe’s top seed and North America’s top seed blaze amazing trails through the entire bracket to make it to the finals.

Just like the League of Legends MSI 2019 Finals, these two regions have been waring over Rainbow Six supremacy for a long while. Evil Geniuses, qualified for the finals after a tremendous deconstruction of LATAM’s heavily favored FaZe Clan in the Semifinals. Across from them, Team Empire had to make their way through APAC’s storied Fnatic franchise in order to have a shot at the championship. 

Through three hard-fought games (first-to-seven), the highly improbable Evil Geniuses stole a very close Game 1, and got very close to taking Game 2. However, Europe’s Team Empire -- who looked rather shaky heading into this tournament after a rather dominant start to the season -- turned the tides of finals and would not be looking back.

The third and deciding game in the Season IX Finals could have been called at multiple points for mercy rules. Evil Geniuses took a couple of rounds, but Team Empire was so horrifically in control there wasn’t a single thing EG could do. 

A victory in Milan, and the Rainbow Six Pro League Season IX Championship marks the first major Rainbow Six title for the storied Russian Esports franchise. Team Empire will go on to prepare themselves for Season X -- which is right around the corner -- and they still have some things to work on prior to next season. 

As for Evil Geniuses, the North American squad pulled out a major standings upset in the final few weeks of the Pro League, and they dominated their opponents in the Milan finals bracket before falling in the clutch to Team Empire. 

Season X is going to culminate in Japan at the end of November, so there’s plenty of time in between now and then for all teams to tweak their gameplan.