The registrations are in, the teams have been counted, and the bids have been tabulated. The IQA Game Play Department is ready to release the number of World Cup qualifying spots each North American region will receive. Want to see how many spots your region got? Read on to find out.

Welcome to the World Cup VI North American Bid announcement. Before we begin, the IQA Game Play Department would like to thank all of the official member teams that hurried to get their membership applications and payments in before the deadline. We know we set a fairly early one, but it was necessary to give the Regional Championships sufficient time to plan their tournaments.

To start off, we will rehash the process by which the North American World Cup bids were distributed. There are 60 total bids to Div. I of the World Cup, six of which have been tentatively left aside for international teams. Based on the number of teams that signed up in Oceania and Europe, each of those regions will earn one spot for the champion of their respective regionals. Four additional spots will be available to international teams which do not have any regional available to them. More details about these international spots will be available soon.

This leaves 54 bids, 16 of which were distributed by results in World Cup V; each team that finished in the top 16 earned a World Cup VI spot for their region, though it does not serve as an automatic spot for themselves. As a reminder, the breakdown of those 16 spots is:

Midwest: 3 bids
Northeast: 3 bids
Southwest: 3 bids
Mid-Atlantic: 2 bids
South: 2 bids
West: 2 bids
Eastern Canada: 1 bids

The remaining 38 bids were distributed on the basis of current official member team density. Each region earned a percentage of the 38 bids equal to the percentage of the North American official member teams that exist in their region as of midnight on Oct. 7. The number of official teams in each region, and the percentage of all teams that equates to, is:

Midwest: 27 Teams (18.9%) – 7 bids
Northeast: 29 Teams (20.3%) – 8 bids
Southwest: 25 Teams (17.5%) – 7 bids
Mid-Atlantic: 23 Teams (16.1%) – 6 bids
South: 14 Teams (9.8%) – 4 bids
West: 16 Teams (11.2%) – 4 bids
Eastern Canada: 9 Teams (6.3%) – 2 bids

Based on waivers submitted to us, two teams have been granted waivers to play in different regionals. (One team switching from Midwest to Southwest and one team switching from Mid-Atlantic to Northeast). Since these changes were made before the count, and those teams will be competing for spots for the World Cup within the other region, those two teams counted for the regional distribution of the region in which they will be competing.

Add those two numbers together, and the final total of World Cup VI bids per region is:

Midwest:  10 bids
Northeast: 11 bids
Southwest: 10 bids
Mid-Atlantic: 8 bids
South: 6 bids
West: 6 bids
Eastern Canada: 3 bids
Oceania: 1 bid
Europe: 1 bid
Other International: 4 bids

If a region doesn’t fill all their bid spots, the bids will be re-distributed to teams in the future. In this case, the extra bid would be distributed based on regional density in the following order: Eastern Canada, Europe, West, Midwest.

The Game Play Department appreciates your patience in this process, and wishes all official teams the best of luck in their Regional Championships, which kickoff on Nov. 3 with the Mid-Atlantic Regional Championship in Roanoke, Virginia.