ESL have today announced their plans for the third and, as it stands, final season of its three-year EPT circuit. Significant changes to the circuit include the removal of one Masters season and the Last Chance tournament. In their place, TakeTV and Team Liquid's tournaments — HomeStory Cup and the Team Liquid Starleague — will be more closely integrated into the circuit and supported financially. The Season Finals events will also see a change in format, with DreamHack's classic Open Bracket returning to replace the 16-player format. The same 16 players will now instead be seeding into the third group stage.
The third season of the ESL Pro Tour will therefore feature these five events:
DreamHack SC2 Masters: Summer 2022 — $338,000 Qualifiers: May 3 - 8 Regionals: May 18 - Jun 5 DreamHack Valencia: Jul 1 - 3
HomeStory Cup XXIII July 21-24
TeamLiquid StarLeague 9 — (E/N: full announcement to follow soon!) July 29 - September 4
Current plans are for Season Finals events and IEM Katowice to be held offline and with an audience, but this is naturally subject to health guidelines and regulations.
Partner Events Integrated for the "Longevity" of StarCraft II
The biggest change to the 2021/22 circuit sees HomeStory Cup and TSL officially integrated into the EPT circuit, rather than being normal third-party events. ESL have announced that these tournaments would therefore receive a boost in EPT Points and financial support from ESL and Blizzard of up to $100,000 in total. The specific prize pools of these three tournaments remain unspecified as of yet.
The inclusion of TSL and HomeStory Cup into the official EPT circuit does not prohibit third parties from potentially adding further EPT events to the schedule, as NeXT or ASUS ROG did in 2021/22, for example. But these tournaments would not be supported financially and would award comparatively fewer EPT points.
EPT Extension Talks with Blizzard are Underway
ESL's announcement is particularly interesting on partner events, as it declares their inclusion "an important step for the longevity of competitive StarCraft II" — 2022/23 is, after all, the final season in ESL and DreamHack's EPT contract with Blizzard as things stand. Asked about this, Matt "Heyoka" Weber, lead product manager of the EPT for StarCraft II, confirmed that this was part of the consideration behind boosting the status of TakeTV and Team Liquid's tournaments:
"This is the third year of our announced partnership with Blizzard, so we're looking ahead to 'how can we work together to make sure players can compete'. And the way we see it is to work closer with people already doing it, instead of just kind of having our thing and their thing."
Asked about the likelihood of Blizzard continuing to sponsor the EPT circuit after the expiration of the current 3-year contract, Heyoka confirmed that talks with Blizzard were underway and that he was optimistic.
The full announcement can be found on the ESL Pro Tour website. They also released this YouTube video of Heyoka explaining their changes to the 2022/23 season.
Asked about the likelihood of Blizzard continuing to sponsor the EPT circuit after the expiration of the current 3-year contract, Heyoka confirmed that talks with Blizzard were underway and that he was optimistic.
On January 08 2022 01:37 tigera6 wrote: I like this, especially how the Season Final format is being changed to let more top players into the competition.
How has it changed? I can't find any info on the website or in the post above.
Open bracket season finals is amazing news. When I saw they were decreasing the amount of them I was disappointed but if that is the price to have them be open bracket then it is totally worth it. I hope they boost the season finals prize pool a little bit though because it will be hard for mid tier KR players who don't qualify from GSL performance to justify flying out for an open bracket event with the current prize pool and structure.
Nice, hopefully we can secure something for even more sc2 past next year!
Although, I noticed that they didn't say anything about regional ESL tournament (NA, EU, China, ect...), someone know if those will keep happening with the open bracket season final?
On January 08 2022 02:41 Nakajin wrote: Nice, hopefully we can secure something for even more sc2 past next year!
Although, I noticed that they didn't say anything about regional ESL tournament (NA, EU, China, ect...), someone know if those will keep happening with the open bracket season final?
You mean weekly? They also didn't say they were cancelled, so I'm assuming they are going strong :D
EDIT: Oh you mean with season finals and stuff? That what this whole posts was about lol. Regionals with season finals offline
On January 08 2022 02:41 Nakajin wrote: Nice, hopefully we can secure something for even more sc2 past next year!
Although, I noticed that they didn't say anything about regional ESL tournament (NA, EU, China, ect...), someone know if those will keep happening with the open bracket season final?
You mean weekly? They also didn't say they were cancelled, so I'm assuming they are going strong :D
EDIT: Oh you mean with season finals and stuff? That what this whole posts was about lol. Regionals with season finals offline
Nah but I mean they say that season final will go back to the Dreamhack open bracket format, but not if there will still be the regional season (that used to feed into the season final). Hypothetically they could abandoned it and just have open bracket season final.
I assume if they don't mention it, it's still on, but just to be sure.
On January 08 2022 03:14 Kalera wrote: The initial post mentions regionals. I imagine they will at least provide advanced seeding into the finals.
Regionals are still happening, the 16 qualified players will now be seeded into the third group stage of an open bracket tournament instead of making up the entire Season Finals event. I've edited the post to include that bit now.
Glad to see there is hope for future support from Blizzard. Hopefully we can get a better cadence of map updates this year, with a mild finger cross for any sort of tiny patch at all(even just bugfixes would be nice at this point).
No tournaments after Katowice to May? That's crazy.
And why is it DH Summer when it ends in beginning of July? There's no DH Fall or Spring? Such a disappointment to see compared to League of Legends and CS:GO which has way more events.
On January 08 2022 04:30 geokilla wrote: No tournaments after Katowice to May? That's crazy.
And why is it DH Summer when it ends in beginning of July? There's no DH Fall or Spring? Such a disappointment to see compared to League of Legends and CS:GO which has way more events.
I mean, SC2 also made 0$ in years, at some point we gotta stop comparing us to esports that left us in the dust almost a decade ago. I'm for one I'm hype for one more year or SC2!
And the GSL + other online events will probably run before the season final.
On January 08 2022 04:30 geokilla wrote: No tournaments after Katowice to May? That's crazy.
And why is it DH Summer when it ends in beginning of July? There's no DH Fall or Spring? Such a disappointment to see compared to League of Legends and CS:GO which has way more events.
Weird. Almost as if LoL and CS:GO are two of the biggest esports in the world while SC2 is really small amd cam actually be glad that it still gets some money from Blizzard to finance these kind of events...
I love it all! I've been wondering how to encourage longevity as well and this sounds like a great first step. Outside of a circuit, sponsors, and 3rd party events...getting new blood into the game is probably the most important step. Difficult problem to solve.
Thinking out loud - if I was a billionaire - I'd offer huge cash prizes to young pros from other games to try to place or win tournaments.
I'm not a billionaire and have no money, so just supporting the scene in the little ways I can and bringing good energy are all I can do for now.
EPT
