Hey! Carmac here from the ESL Product Team. Wanted to drop by with another update from our team to let you know what we’ve been working on in 2021 across our product portfolio under the ESL Pro Tour umbrella.
We want to do more of this across the year, to share some behind the scenes visibility because such posts have helped us better shape how we work and improve the experiences we ultimately deliver.
So to begin, here is our ESL Pro Tour 2021 tournament calendar.
Additionally, here is the concluded January ESL World Ranking (covers all teams, all competitions). The EPT Standings measures performance within the ESL Pro Tour to determine teams that qualify into ESL One Cologne. If you have questions on these two systems, let me know.
ESL World Ranking
Team | Rank (New) | Move | Rank (Old) |
|---|---|---|---|
Astralis | 1 | ±0 | 1 |
Team Vitality | 2 | ±0 | 2 |
Natus Vincere | 3 | ±0 | 3 |
BIG | 4 | ±0 | 4 |
Heroic | 5 | ±0 | 5 |
FURIA Esports
| 6 | ±0 | 6 |
G2 Esports | 7 | +1 | 8 |
Team Liquid | 8 | +1 | 9 |
Virtus.pro | 9 | +2 | 11 |
mousesports | 10 | -3 | 7 |
Gambit Esports | 11 | +2 | 13 |
Complexity | 12 | -2 | 10 |
OG | 13 | -1 | 12 |
Cloud9 | 14 | ±0 | 14 |
FunPlus Phoenix | 15 | X | X |
FaZe Clan | 16 | ±0 | 16 |
ESL Pro Tour Standing
Team | Rank |
|---|---|
Astralis | 1 |
Team Vitality | 2 |
Heroic | 3 |
Furia Esports | 4 |
Natus Vincere | 5 |
BIG | 6 |
Renegades | 7 |
Complexity | 8 |
Team Spirit | 9 |
EXTREMUM | 10 |
Evil Geniuses | 11 |
OG | 12 |
FaZe Clan | 13 |
mousesports | 14 |
FunPlus Phoenix | 15 |
Vici Gaming | 16 |
Intel Extreme Masters: Katowice
After reviewing the successes and challenges with the IEM Global Challenge, our team is at work to enhance the viewing experience for IEM Katowice. A few of our priorities:
- We are sending over 30x packages to teams across Europe in order to have teams integrated at a high quality within our broadcasts. These kits include lights, cameras, Intel’s mini PCs and branding.
- We are creating a new virtual studio environment for the tournament - still WIP but check out some previews HERE
- We’ll be creating more custom content, more fun, better storytelling & most importantly more surf maps.
- Since the launch of the EPT back in 2019, this is the first time we’ve been able to use our EPT Championship tournament format consisting of 24 teams. You can read all the details of the formatting HERE
This will also be the first tournament where we separate the Group Stages away from the Playoffs that take place on the following weekend. This means:
- Play-in & Group stages: Feb 16-21
- Playoffs are: Feb 26-28
With this change we are hopeful to fulfil our vision of using the time in between to increase the excitement in build up to the best matches of the tournament. We’ll do this through significant increases to promotional content while using this time to refine our broadcast. This will not be a silent week from our channels!
ESL Pro League: Season 13
On Friday 29th January (see here), we announced a lot of updates to our upcoming season such as:
- Confirmed teams
- Replacement rules
- Tournament schedule and formatting
We also had previously communicated on January 21st (see here) that we have intentions to return to LAN for the EPL Playoffs scheduled to take place in April. This will be our first competition on LAN since March 2020 and we are taking the following steps to try and bring this to reality:
- In close discussion with Maltese officials on the feasibility of bringing in 50+ players and crew into the country
- Continued work on our ‘Return to LAN’ Covid-19 protocols to ensure the safety of all players, talent & crew
We’ll continue to be realistic in our planning and will update you again on our progress next month.
DreamHack Open
On Thursday 28th January, we announced the entire 2021 tournament schedule (see here). There will be 7x DH Open competitions to complement our EPT Masters level (IEM, ESL One, EPL, DHM). We spent this last month on defining how the Open competitions should operate for the year, a few notes:
- The majority of DH Open competitions this year will be run as online regional competitions until we reach Q4 where we hope to bring back live events.
- With a large number of competitions (not just ESL) taking place in Europe this year due to travel restrictions, we’ve put an emphasis on DH Open having more NA/SA/SEA regional competitions and representation within our ESL Pro Tour system.
- As in 2020, all DH Open competitions will always provide winners with invites to the subsequent EPT Masters competitions.
ESEA Premier
We announced on January 10th a change of focus and prioritization around our tier 2 ESEA structure. This saw MDL transition to ESEA Premier and become more closely connected to the ESL Pro Tour awarding higher amounts of prize money and more frequent opportunities into ESL Pro League. What this means for all ESEA Premier seasons and divisions in 2021:
National Championships
The base layer of our ESL Pro Tour are the national competitions that we run across the globe. These tournaments provide opportunities for local teams to compete and climb the EPT structure. We have revamped the structure to provide a clearer pathway for all teams to compete, see details:
A global playoff has been created which will take place on EU servers in 2021 and scale for 2022. In 2021 all winners from each respective National Competition will be eligible to compete in order to advance into the subsequent EPT Championship Play-in or EPT Masters competition.
- Season 1 will act as a transitional season to onboard all our changes
- We are working closely to align all schedules in order for teams to have sufficient time to compete in the International Playoff
If you are competing regularly within an ESL National Championship, please direct your questions to your regular point of contacts for scheduling/formatting topics.
