BetBoom Team and Vici Gaming became the final two teams to advance to the semifinals of the Esports World Cup Dota 2 tournament thanks to their wins Friday in Paris.

Vici opened the day with a 2-0 victory over Team Falcons, and BetBoom added a 2-0 win over Nigma Galaxy in the quarterfinal stage.

BetBoom and Vici will square off in one semifinal match Saturday with Team Yandex and PARIVISION going head to head in the other after both advanced on Thursday. The winners move on to the grand final on Sunday and the losers will compete in the third-place match.

The Dota 2 event at the Esports World Cup is the final championship of the ESL Pro Tour, now in its fourth season. The tournament has a $2 million prize pool, with $750,000 and 1,000 EWC club points going to the first-place team.

The format consists of three phases: a group stage of 24 teams that competed in a round robin, a survival phase (Tuesday-Wednesday) formatted into a single-elimination bracket that saw four teams advance, then a final playoff stage (Thursday-Sunday), which is single elimination.

The four group winners advanced directly to the playoffs. Teams finishing second through fourth in their groups went to the survival stage, a two-round bracket that decided the other four teams to make the playoff field of eight.

All matches in Phase 1 were two games, while the matches in Phases 2 and 3 are best-of-three until the best-of-five grand final.

On Friday, Vici prevailed in 57 on red and 32 minutes on green over Falcons. Guo “Xm” Hongcheng of China led the way for Vici with a kill-death-assist ratio of 29-5-21 across the two maps.

BetBoom took down Nigma in 35 minutes on red and 49 minutes on green. Ilya “Kiritych” Ulyanov of Russia put up a dominant 17-3-28 K-D-A for BetBoom.

The Esports World Cup features competition in 25 titles and a $75 million prize pool. Other upcoming events include League of Legends, PUBG, EA Sports FC, Call of Duty: Warzone, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, Rocket League, Counter-Strike 2 and Fortnite.

The tournament continues Saturday with the semifinal matches:

— BetBoom Team vs. Vici Gaming

–Team Yandex vs. PARIVISION

Dota 2 Esports World Cup payouts (prize money, club points)

1. $750,000, 1,000 — TBD

2. $340,000, 750 — TBD

3. $200,000, 500 — TBD

4. $120,000, 300 — TBD

5-8. $70,000, 200 — Team Spirit, Rune Eaters, Nigma Galaxy, Team Falcons

9-12. $40,000, 0 — LGD Gaming, 1w, Team Liquid, Aurora Gaming

13-16. $20,000, 0 — MOUZ, Xtreme Gaming, Virtus.pro, PlayTime

17-20. $10,000, 0 — GamerLegion, Level UP, REKONIX, OG

21-24. $7,500, 0 — Poor Rangers, L1 Team, Team Nemesis, Inner Circle x Insanity

–Field Level Media

The Philadelphia Flyers secured a key piece of their blue line Friday, signing defenseman Jamie Drysdale to a four-year, $26 million contract, the team announced.

The deal allows the two sides to avoid arbitration, carries an average annual value of $6.5 million and keeps the 24-year-old under contract through the 2029-30 season.

Drysdale secured a long-term deal after his best NHL season. He scored a career-high eight goals (three game-winners) and tied his personal best with 32 points over 78 games in 2025-26, ranking second among Philadelphia defensemen in scoring.

“Since we acquired him, Jamie has worked extremely hard and taken big steps in his development,” general manager Daniel Briere said. “We believe his best hockey is still ahead of him, and he’s going to play an important role in strengthening our blue line as we continue to build.”

Drysdale’s teammates selected him as the recipient of the Pelle Lindbergh Memorial Trophy, awarded annually to Philadelphia’s most improved player.

Philadelphia acquired Drysdale and a 2025 second-round draft pick from the Anaheim Ducks in January 2024 in exchange for forward Cutter Gauthier. The Toronto native was originally selected sixth overall by Anaheim in the 2020 NHL Draft.

Drysdale has registered 25 goals and 77 assists in 295 career games with the Ducks and Flyers. He reached 100 career points during the past season, becoming the third-fastest defenseman from his draft class to hit the milestone.

–Field Level Media

Bryson DeChambeau was handed a two-stroke penalty following his second round at the Open Championship on Friday in Southport, England, after R&A rules officials determined he had taken actions to improve “the area of his intended swing” on a shot 13 holes earlier.

For a few hours, there was a legitimate question as to whether DeChambeau would continue playing the final major championship of the year. He declined to speak to reporters about his penalty, and his agent, Brett Falkoff, claimed he was “100 percent” serious when he appeared to tell rules officials he won’t be back for the third round.

At 12:02 a.m. local time, DeChambeau posted to social media and left no doubt about where he’d be Saturday.

“Obviously disappointed with the ruling,” he wrote. “I don’t agree with it, but it is what it is. This fires me up. Onto the weekend. Let’s get it.”

A popular but divisive figure in the world of golf, the LIV Golf star originally posted a 4-under 66 to move to 7 under, one shot behind Australia’s Lucas Herbert. Now, rather than waking up Saturday in second place and the final pairing for the third round, DeChambeau will enter the weekend three behind Herbert instead of one, his bogey 5 at the fifth hole changed to a triple-bogey 7.

The downgrade for DeChambeau altered Saturday pairings, pushing Jackson Suber to the final group with Herbert. DeChambeau and Sam Burns, who shot 62 on Friday, are scheduled to tee off at 10:30 a.m. ET followed by Cameron Young and Ryan Gerard, then Suber and Herbert.

DeChambeau hit his drive at the par-4 fifth hole far right and eventually found the ball in a native area. Replays showed the two-time major winner stamping down on different patches of tall grass near his ball. It may have affected not the lie of the ball, but the path for his eventual swing.

DeChambeau vehemently disagreed with the ruling as officials shuttled him back to the scene of the alleged misdeed before he could enter the scoring trailer to sign his second-round scorecard.

U.S. TV cameras captured a discussion several minutes long, and at points DeChambeau could be seen gesticulating and getting animated.

“He’s a lot of things. He’s not a cheater,” Falkoff later told reporters. “He’s a big boy. He’ll see how he feels. But he certainly feels he was unfairly penalized.”

More than an hour after his round ended, the R&A, who organize The Open, cemented their decision. A new score was reflected on the massive leaderboard between the 18th green and where DeChambeau stood ripping golf balls on the driving range.

Following that session on the range, which commenced immediately after DeChambeau and his team left scoring, the narrative was less about the infraction and more about what comes next.

TV cameras had shown DeChambeau appear to tell rules officials “I just won’t play tomorrow” before they boarded multiple carts to return to the scoring trailer and the R&A released its decision.

DeChambeau didn’t have a choice whether he would play the weekend at the first three majors of the year, as he missed the cut at the Masters, the PGA Championship and the U.S. Open.

The R&A, which organizes The Open, confirmed DeChambeau’s penalty was not for improving the lie of his ball, but rather the path for his eventual swing.

“An improvement means to alter one or more of the conditions affecting the stroke so that the player gains a potential advantage for the stroke,” Grant Moir, the R&A’s executive director for governance, told reporters. “Now, I’ll stress that this applies even when the action is accidental, as it was in Bryson’s case.”

–Field Level Media