‘Louvre Agreement’ creates new framework for CS:GO ecosystem with long-term league slots for teams and revenue and profit sharing which extends to other ESL Pro Tour competitions
A groundbreaking new agreement between leading CS:GO teams, ESL and DreamHack will govern the setup of Pro League and share of revenues and profits from ESL’s Pro Tour competitions. The teams, representing the top level of professional CS:GO, will also become majority stakeholders in the league with a long-term slot for participation. By partnering with the leading CS:GO teams, the new agreement further establishes the ESL Pro Tour as one of the most valuable properties in the global business of esports.
The new agreement - informally dubbed ‘The Louvre Agreement’ - was signed by Astralis, Complexity, Evil Geniuses, ENCE, FaZe Clan, Fnatic, G2 Esports, Mousesports, Natus Vincere, Ninjas in Pyjamas, Team Liquid, Team Vitality, 100 Thieves and ESL following a meeting in Paris in January 2020. Between them, the signatories of the agreement have won 28 ESL and DreamHack Masters-level competitions and two Intel® Grand Slams in the last four years and represent all of the top 10 ranked teams in the world.
The agreement establishes a deep partnership between ESL, DreamHack and the partner teams, and introduces teams as key stakeholders in the transformed ESL Pro League running with a singe global division of 24 teams.
The founding teams will retain a long-term slot in the league similar to other sports, with remaining teams qualifying on the basis of their world ranking or directly through the Mountain Dew League, the ESL Pro League’s gateway competition.
The agreement will also mean partner teams earn a share of revenues from all competitions in the ESL Pro Tour - including marque tournaments such as IEM Katowice and ESL One Cologne. Beyond that, partner teams which are ranked top 20 are also eligible to select slots in ESL Pro Tour events in a draft pick.