How’s ESL Pro League S14 Online Major Going?
(3 votes, average: 2.33 out of 5)
The biggest major of this half of the year is currently on – check out what’s going on with ESL Pro League Season 14!
ESL Pro League was first announced in 2014 and launched in 2015 by Electronic Sports League in cooperation with North-American E-Sports Entertainment Association League. The joint venture allowed for a global scale of the event and amassment of a decent prize pool.
With two seasons of the tournament held each year, we’ve just entered Season 14 this Monday and have already seen the first group elimination matches. Three more simultaneous matches will be played tonight and show us who’s proceeding from Group A.
The Background On ESL Pro League Online
In the beginning, ESL Pro League usually played out as live, offline events that gathered a spectacular audience. With the expansion of team rosters and forming local leagues on different continents, the league eliminations would take place locally and then have the winners compete in the international major. 2020 CoVID pandemic forced most such initiatives and organizations to either postpone their plans or move the whole format to the Internet. ESL, in the light of the events, decided to only hold regional finals for Season 11 and 12.
ESL Pro League Season 13 resulted in unexpected changes. Regional leagues were dissolved and worldwide teams participated in a unified league. The finals were held offline in Europe and required players to travel there amidst the health crisis.
With some reservation towards online tournaments, especially when it comes to anti-cheating measures, the format seems to be doing fine. It requires players to get used to miniscule differences in the display rates and ticks, but this proved no problem for professionals. On July 20th it was announced that the whole of Season 14 will be held online due to safety concerns of travelling players.
Who’s Playing in ESL Pro League Season 14?
Below we’re listing all the participating teams in their shuffled groups.
GROUP A
- Heroic
- Team Vitality
- ENCE
- Astralis
- Team Spirit
- Bad News Bears
GROUP B
- Complexity Gaming
- forZe
- G2 Esports
- OG
- Sinners Esports
- Virtus.pro
GROUP C
- BIG
- Evil Geniuses
- FaZe Clan
- Fnatic
- mousesports
- Natus Vincere
GROUP D
- Entropiq
- FURIA Esports
- Gambit Esports
- Ninjas in Pyjamas
- Team Liquid
- Team One
What Is The Prize Pool?
The total prize pool for this season’s ESL Pro is $750,000. The distribution of prizes among the participants looks like this:
1st – $175,000
2nd – $60,000
3rd-4th – $30,000
5th-8th – $13,750 each
9th-12th – $10,000 each
13th-16th– $7,000 each
17th-20th – $5,000 each
21st-24th – $3,000 each
Additional prizes include $5,000 for every group stage match won.
Matches So Far
With a win in every group match, Heroic secured their Pro League playoff, not having to worry about the results of today’s matches.
It’d be a bit rough to call it a fall from grace, but this season’s Astralis performance thus far is significantly worse than their 2019 winning spree. Losing their last match to Vitality, they’d need an incredible turn of events not only on their side, but also a total underperformance by ENCE.
ESL Road To Rio debutants, Bad News Bears, were severely squashed by each and every of their group contestants, eventually being secured out of the Pro League by a 0-2 win of Spirit.
You can easily go to ESL Pro League’s website and see what match is coming up ahead and look into the results of previous matches, be it group stage or future brackets.
Prospects
It’s too early to foretell any future results from other groups at this point. For sure, Heroic seem like they’re in their prime and ready to stick it to any opponent on their way to the grand finals, but let’s remember that good things tend not to last too long.
Surely it will be a treat to see how the Virtus.Pro CIS roster will perform against the likes of G2 and OG after the legendary team’s rollercoaster performance of owning 1st spot on cs_summit_7 and then ending up rank 8th in the last season of ESL.
Group D elimination looks like a real show with three teams from the ESL Ranking’s top 10 (Ninjas in Pyjamas, Gambit and FURIA) and two other top-tier teams (Team Liquid and Entropiq) struggling to top the group.
2021 ESL Pro League CSGO Summary
The major’s formula has been changed to full online – this means less exciting fuss around it, no stadium footage and less of a show, but absolutely not less interest from the global audience. It is expected that those who didn’t pay attention to the major events will now be more eager to watch live streams even during their other daily routines.
The group stage might be full of upsets and incredibly hard skirmishes, and there’s still many matches ahead. We’ll be super curious about the shape of quarterfinals.
We’re also curious if the still-fresh rotation map, Ancient, will be getting more screen time. In May this year Ancient replaced Train in the major roster and Season 14 is its only third major.
We hope that you enjoyed this little overview of the latest season of ESL Pro League and will enjoy watching the team struggle for the gran prix!
