Following up on the recent news about changes to the tournament calendar, ESL has revealed how Pro League Conference – the first event under the new system, which is set to take place as early as November. Thus, the fifteenth season of the ESL Pro League will be an interim season and will provide a transition from the previous competition structure to the new one.
The ESL Pro League Conference will feature teams that have won Challenger-level tournaments as well as national-level competitions. The Conference results will be used to allocate slots in the group stage of the ESL Pro League. As the number of participants will now increase, the prize pool of the latter has also been increased – now it is not 750, but 850 thousand dollars.
In the transitional fifteenth season, three places in the ESL Pro League will be distributed based on the results of the Conference tournament, and another three will go to the winners of ESEA Premier S38. From the sixteenth season, the participants of the EPL group stage will be made up of those who will win the Conference, ranking leaders and partner teams.
It is already known that Renewal and Extra Salt, who won the DreamHack Open in Asia and North America, will take part in the ESL Pro League Conference in November. The remaining locations are to be determined in October and early November.