Today we have a new and exciting partner joining the ESL Pro Tour StarCraft II. Coinbase, a global cryptocurrency platform, will be the Official Crypto Exchange Partner of the ESL Pro Tour StarCraft^® II & WarCraft III, leading into Intel^® Extreme Masters Katowice 2022. 

With the recent grand finale of our season of DreamHack SC2 Masters: Summer, our attention turns to shifting gears for the remainder of the year. Within ESL Pro Tour, one of our main focuses has always been to stay forward-thinking to provide long-term stability within the ecosystem for players, commentators and fans. Coinbase as a partner will help provide the support to realize this goal. We hope we can work together to educate our fans on the next generation of exchanges while working together for the benefit of StarCraft community members and competitors.

Our Roadmap - A Return to In-Person Competition

One of our goals with this year’s ESL Pro Tour StarCraft II is to step away from pure online broadcasts and competition. Due to the global nature of the EPT, in order to achieve this we need to balance the right timing, resources with the correct safety precautions. With partners such as Coinbase and Shopify, this goal is becoming more and more likely, as we continue to develop our step by step plan on how we want to return until we’re back to full, live event experiences.

DreamHack SC2 Masters: Summer was the first season in that roadmap by being able to bring our commentators safely back to join us in our studios in Stockholm. Having them together helps bring an energy that we can only get when people are face to face. We aim for this to be our new baseline standard as we head further into the remaining Fall & Winter seasons.

The next step will be bringing players back, which we’ve been continuously evaluating for months and are now specifically reviewing DreamHack SC2 Masters: Fall with our Season Finals planned for September. 

This will depend on the global travel situation and would only happen if we are able to provide a safe and secure experience for all through by abiding to all local and global government regulations for all six of our regions, including South Korea. This would be the first time since IEM Katowice 2020 where we would have a global in-person competition and we’re excited to get to this point, but we need to do this in the right way, and we don’t want to leave any regions out.

Beyond that, and deeper within our planning, we are evaluating our return to a live event experience through making a return at IEM Katowice or a DreamHack Festival. We’re hopeful that we are on the road back to normality where we want to meet up together as a StarCraft community once again. 

As we look at the remaining 2021/2022 competition calendar, the EPT for StarCraft II still has four events to go, including our World Championship next February. In addition to our ESL Open Cups each week, there are three more DreamHack SC2 Masters tournaments that lead into the EPT Championship at Intel Extreme Masters Katowice 2022. We have something for players of all levels so come and join us whatever your situation is, and enjoy the season with us and Coinbase.