The fourth installment of the ESL Pro Tour begins in the next couple weeks, and we would like to share the details of our stops for this year of competitions. The breakdown of the seasons is outlined below, including our regional events and offline finals formats, prize pool distribution, and slots assignments for each competition. An overview on the circuit structure was outlined in our 2023 Announcement and the breakdown for this season follows below.
First Steps of the Competitive Calendar
The 2023/2024 season will have two Masters competitions ahead of the EPT Championship in 2024, in a two stages fashion: The ESL Masters Regionals played online, leading to the offline finals hosted at DreamHack Festivals.
ESL SC2 Masters: Summer 2023 - $200,000 USD
- Online Regionals - $125,000 USD
- Qualifiers: April 7th to 9th
- Week 1: May 2nd to 7th
- Week 2: May 9th to 14th
- Week 3: May 17th to 21st
- ESL SC2 Masters: Summer 2023 played in Jönköping - June 16th to 18th - $75,000 USD
ESL SC2 Masters: Winter 2023 - $200,000 USD
- Online Regionals - $125,000 USD
- Qualifiers: Oct 20th - 22nd
- Week 1: Oct 31st - Nov 5th
- Week 2: November 7th to 12th
- Week 3: November 15th to 19th
- ESL SC2 Masters: Winter 2023 played in Atlanta - December 15th to 17th - $75,000 USD
Format update
As part of the regional restructuring done for this year, the online regionals, as well as the Masters events will be played in different formats. To give continuity to this we will follow the plan of having StarCraft II in our DreamHack Festivals at Jönköping and Atlanta!
ESL Masters Events - Online Regionals
All three regions are now played in Swiss groups followed by Single Elimination Playoffs.
The Regionals sizes are the following:
- Europe: 32 players, 2 Swiss groups of 16 players
- Asia: 16 players in a single Swiss group
- Americas: 16 players in a single Swiss group
As part of the Swiss system, pairings will be done, initially by seeding, and by performance on later rounds. Each player that achieves 3 match victories will advance to playoffs, while suffering 3 match losses will lead to elimination.
ESL Masters Events - LAN at DreamHack Festival
These events will have a new format, bringing in a different approach the established format from previous DreamHack events, a 48 players competition, with the 16 players Masters Group stage, 32 players Open Qualifiers and the Knockout Bracket leading to the Playoffs. There are two ways to join the competition: By securing an invite through the DreamHack SC2 Masters Regionals and GSL Seasons, or by signing up to attend at the event. The invite distribution is the following:
ESL SC2 Masters: Summer 2023
- 6 Players from GSL Season 1
- 4 Players from the ESLM Europe Regional
- 2 Players from the ESLM Americas Regional
- 1 Player from the ESLM Asia Regional
- 3 Players from the Global Standings
These 16 invites will receive travel and accommodation support to the event, and will be seeded into further stages of the competition. The remaining 32 slotsare open for all eligible contestants to sign up, but slots will be granted to players after those are weighted by the amount of EPT Points they hold. Any tiebreaker needed will follow point 2.2.2 on the EPT Rulebook. With the return of offline play we would like to take this opportunity to mention that the removal of region-lock announced on the past year still is in effect.
ESL Open Cup Update
Starting on April 2nd we will kick off the 2023/24 season of Open Cups, and start awarding EPT Global Points. The Prize pool will remain of $400 USD per weekly edition, and the 19 points will keep the same split of 10/5/2/2 for the Top4.
Ranking Update
With the beginning of a new year of competitions, the EPT Ranking will be reset to 0 and the race will be on for those that want to amass points through Regional and Partnered Events, as well as Open Cups.
Seeding Rules for 2022/2023 Competitions
Starting with our new season, the seeding process will follow the patterns established for 2022/23.
The seeding process for ESL SC2 Masters: Summer will be based on performances across the following order:
- IEM Katowice 2023
- EPT 2022/23 Standings
Once first season regionals are complete, the data from 2022/23 will be dropped and we will transition the seeding based on performances across:
- Based on EPT 2023/24 Results, as outlined on the §2.2 of the Rulebook.
Tiebreakers
The ESL Open Open Cups results will be used to decide any tiebreaker situations.
Player Invites for ESL SC2 Masters: Summer 2023
Following up the standard set in 2022/23 we will have half of the group stage re-invited from the previous year standings. For the merged regions, the combined standings will be used:
- Europe - 16x Players (Division size: 32)
- Americas - 8x Players (Division size: 16) from NA + LatAm
- Asia - 8x Players (Division size: 16) from TWHK + CN + OCE & RoA
To populate groups, there will be Open and Closed Qualifiers. The Closed Qualifiers will have returning players from 2022/23 combined standings invited.
- Europe - 16x Players
- Americas - 8x Players
- Asia - 8x Players
All player invitations as well as the details covering the competitions will be issued in the coming weeks.
