We started our journey in esports in 2019. We had many plans for 2020 – even thought this has been a strange year, we have achieved a lot. Now it’s time to look back what has happened!

January

In the beginning of the year we had two streamers and four different games: CS:GO, Fortnite, Starcraft and Hearthstone. We were satisfied how our first year went, but we were looking for growth. At this point, it was the right time to grow our stream team, and we were happy to announce that Tito “Tixtuu” Huovila was joining us!

February

In February it was time for our CS-players to enjoy some LAN-events. Yeah, at that time we got to meet people face-to-face and not only via computer. Anyway, Assembly Winter 2020 didn’t go as planned, and we could not repeat the amazing win from the Assembly Summer 2019.

At the end of February, we took part in Lantrek 2020. Sadly we couldn’t beat SJ Gaming and we missed the finals, but our guys fought and got the 3th place.

March

At March we had a LOT going on: We were about to announce two new teams: Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege and NHL. Our R6 team had a bootcamp in Jyväskylä and played for a spot in Nordic League. It was quite a rough start for our team as they didn’t qualify, but it didn’t matter: We were more than happy to have new team under our name!

Before the corona break-out we had a chance to meet our fans and play some Fortnite and CS with them, as we and POWER organized an event in Turku. Part of our staff were there with our streamers Sami “FaijaRektaa” Huovila and Tito “Tixtuu” Huovila. It was great to meet you all there!

In March our CS:GO team played in Rio’s Minor Closed Qualifiers. Our guys showed what they can do and played very well – they didn’t win, but they showed that they can be tough opponent to worlds top teams.

Our card player Ville “Keppada” Pääkkö started the year 2020 with a great drive: He qualified to Hearthstone Master Tour Bali and he was the 10th person in Europe to get Masters rank in Runeterra.

The Master Tour was supposed to get place in Bali, but because of COVID19 Blizzard relocated it to Los Angeles. The situation with corona got even worse, and Keppada the tournament changed to online mode. The tournament didn’t go well for Keppada, but he got an great experience

In March we also published our partnership with Leijona Työvaatteet. At the same time we published some cool merch for you to buy!

April

After busy March, we all had to adapt to the new situation. We could not meet each other as much as normally, but we knew we had to keep things going. Our CS-guys started playing Elisa Viihde Spring Challenge at the end of March, and closed the series in April with victory. Along with the victory they got a place to Elisa Invitational Spring 2020, where they played against North and Nordavind for example. After the tournament our HLTV-ranking was 69 – so we rose 63 places!

In April we also published Fortnite Deathrun competition, which we hosted with POWER. The competition lasted until May, and we saw many cool performances in the map!

May

In May we had many things to celebrate. Our R6-guys got their silver medals in FEL’s R6-league, after losing to GODSENT. We also heard that Telia will host a new League of Legends -series in Finland and other Nordic Countries. Most of our staff loved LoL already, and we were very exited about new series. We faced one little problem: We didn’t have a team in LoL.
Luckily our GM Timo had some mämmi left from Easter, and with the power of Mämmi it took only couple of phone calls and we had the team. The captain Tatu “tatuy” Jauhiainen told us, that the team is the best team in Finland. Our team also got the invitation to the Telia Esports Series.

Our CS-guys had a reason to party, when they won Telia Esports Series. They took SJ Gaming down with a clean 2-0 sweep and also got a spot in Dream Hack Open Winter 2020 tournament!

With all this joy in competitive side, we were also thrilled to announce our partnership with F-Secure.

June

In June we announced two awesome partners: Sector Alarm and Lumo Energia. We also had some sad news to tell: We were about to disband our Fortnite players. We and our players Niko “Aistimus” Anttila and Ville “Flowdi” Virtala talked about the scene, and realized that it has not developed as we thought it would. Both of them decided to leave the competitive scene for now. Thank you guys for great time together!


In June we met our LoL-team for the first time, when they started their journey in Telia Esports Series. Our players told us, that they would win the whole thing, and the beginning looked great: They won their opening match.

July

July was a good month for us. Our CS:GO-team faced HAVU in Finnish Esports League finals, and we were very excited about the final, and our game plan was clear.

Well, it worked and we got the big pocal!

Also our League of Legends team finished their journey in Telia Esports Series. In the beginning of the series, they said, that victory is the only opinion.

Well, as expected, they did won the whole thing. They also got a place in Telia Masters tournament, which took place in August.

Our Starcraft 2 boys ZhuGeLiang and Mixu competed in Fuzers Shelter Gameroom Open. They managed to get to the podium: ZhuGeLiang got the brightest medal, and Mixu got the 3th place.

In June we announced a new team to KOVA: We were happy to welcome our sim racing team!

August

August started well. Our new sim racing team competed in Digital sim racing eSM. We knew they were fast, and at the end of the very hot day we got to celebrate Tuomas Tähtelä and Valtteri Alander, as Tuomas got the first place and Valtteri the third place!

We also had some sad news to tell you. During player break, our young AWP-player Nikita “Derkeps” Sirmitev had decided that it’s time to focus on his studies. Because of that’ he stepped down from our active CS:GO-roster.

But it didn’t take too long after we announced the new fifth player: we were ready to welcome Jarkko “spargo” Rahja to our team!

As our CS:GO roster was practicing after changes, our LoL team continued their journey to Telia Masters.

It didn’t take too long after we were sure that they were going to dominate this tournament as they did in Telia Esports Series. They won the whole thing, and with the win they got a place to NLC relegations!

NLC relegations didn’t go as well as we hoped for. Our guys lost to Singularity Esports 3-2, and our journey ended there.

We also had some other action! Our streamers FaijaRektaa and Tixtuu hosted a 24 hours stream, and during the stream they opened 1000 CS:GO cases. Also we had our first KOVA Starcraft team league tournament!

September

In September we faced HAVU once again, this time in Elisa Finnish Championship 2020 -tournament. Unfortunately this time HAVU got the biggest prize.

We also hosted first KOVA Cup powered by Lumo Energia! It was the first wingman tournament that we ever did, and because it went so well, we decided to make more of them!

October

In October it was time to announce new partnership (and new team!). As we started working together with Valtra, we also helped them to found amazing team to Farming Simulator.

November

Our League of Legends team had another tournament ahead of them in November. NLC Fall Open tournament took place in November. We faced some great teams, and unfortunately we couldn’t perform as well as before.

As our teams kept playing, we were ready to announce something new. We now have our own academy team in CS:GO, as we started co-operation with JAMI. If you don’t know what to study next year, be sure to check kovakatemia.fi!

December

Finally it was the last month of this strange year! We thought that we didn’t have much you tell you at this point at the year, but oh, how wrong we were.

We had a BIG surprise to our League of Legends team. As one NLC team had to step down from the league, they offered the spot fo us and of course we took it! So next year instead of dominating Telia Esports Series, we will be dominating NLC!

This year The Finnish Starcraft 2 community celebrated its 10th anniversary with an online tournament for the Finnish players, and our player ZhuGeLiang showed his skills and won the whole tournament!

We also made first Gaming Sohva episode together with Lumo Energia. Our first guest was NHL goalie Ville Husso!

Also our League of Legends team competed in League of Legends ESM-tournament. It was the last tournament for our team with that roster. In finals they lost to Isänmaan Toivot (ex-ENCE), and got the second place.

THANK YOU ALL FOR THE YEAR 2020 – WE ARE READY FOR 2021!

We want to thank all our fans and partners. Even thought there was some hard times, we are happy how this year went for us! We also want to thank all players who are with us now and who have left us: You have made our journey amazing!