ECS returns for Season 7 with a new format
FACEIT have announced the return of their ECS league for 2019 being set to run from March 11th to May 9th. However much like EPL, FACEIT have made massive changes that they claim will "reduce strain on [team's] calendars and raises the stakes of each match."
Previously scheduling concerns have troubled the ECS, with compLexity most notably being forced to pull out of the league during Season 5 in order to play in EPL Relegation, and Renegades recently having had to miss the finals during Season 6 in order to participate in the FACEIT Asia Minor.
The first changes come to the number of Open Qualifiers for both regions, having been increased from two to four with two teams qualifying from each of them. After that there will be a 16 team best-of-three swiss style tournament featuring eight qualified teams and eight invited teams. A team's placement during the Challenger Cup will determine their eligibility for the Regular Season, with teams placing higher during the cup being offered spots in each of the five series before their lower-ranked colleagues.
Following the conclusion of the challenger cup, the regular season will begin, which is now being split into five individual series spread out from March to May. The top eight teams from Season 6 will have priority for each of the series, with any open spots being filled by the 9th and 10th teams from Season 6 or by teams from the Challenger Cup.
It is expected based on a Tweet from Roald Van Buuren, the esports director at FACEIT that once a team qualifies to the Grand Finals, they are unlikely to play in the following series giving more teams a chance to play. This will also help to alleviate scheduling concerns, as a team can now afford to miss a series and still be able to qualify to the Grand Finals.
Each of the series will have $25k on offer and the first three will grant a spot in the Grand Finals which will be returning to Wembley this season. However, in an interesting twist, the final two series will not offer a spot, with the final team from each region instead being decided based on whichever team earned the most over the course of the regular season.
With this announcement, the first Open Qualifier is now open to register for here and is set to begin on February 16th.
