LANChamp's Bob Weaver has also posted a discussion thread in our forums about this LAN, with a different post from the press release below...

Friday, July 2 – LANchamp, LLC, the organization which has brought a new approach to competitive eSports through three successful events in Counter-Strike: Source, is announcing its fourth event – but this time in a whole new territory.

LANchamp TF2, a 16-team bracket tournament featuring competition in Valve’s Team Fortress 2, will begin its online qualifying rounds Sunday, July 11 and conclude live outside of Los Angeles at Yogi’s Cyber Hub in Mission Viejo, CA on Saturday Aug. 7, with a total prize pot of $12,000 as its reward. Applications are currently being accepted to fill the tournament bracket.

“The competitive scene of Team Fortress 2 has grown during a period of extreme uncertainty for eSports,” said LANchamp founder Bob Weaver. “There has been little more reason to compete than a pure love for the game, yet the TF2 community in its entirety has continued to evolve. We’re excited to offer this great scene even more of an incentive to compete, and we can’t wait to see just how big the community can make this.”

Registration for interested teams is open now on www.LANchamp.com and will continue through Thursday, July 8. Rosters of nine players will be accepted for the tournament’s 6v6 play structure, and 16 teams will be chosen from the applicant pool to fill a standard knock-out bracket. The first two rounds will be held online, nightly over two weeks, producing a final four teams who will appear live at Yogi’s on August 7. Those four teams are guaranteed a minimum of $1,200 for showing up and placing at least fourth, as well as the chance to compete for a first-place prize of $6,000. Prizes are paid out at the live event, immediately after the tournament’s completion.

“The move into TF2 is one that has been anticipated before LANchamp even hit the internet,” said Weaver. “We’ve witnessed outstanding success in our first three CS:S tournaments, and we believe our model can produce the same effect in any eSport with a strong community – young or old. LANchamp wasn’t created because it believes in any particular game, it was created because it believes in eSport.”

LANchamp tournaments in their entirety come with full-blown coverage, including live streams of each matches and shoutcast analysts alongside. The LAN finals will be open to the public, as well as broadcast live in its entirety to the internet through in-game SourceTV and live streams, all through www.LANchamp.com.

Via the Apocalypse Gaming Community, comes this picture from Valve apparently from the upcoming Engineer Update. That's definitely a new map... Anyone spot anything else?