Evil Geniuses and BNB round out ECL Season 46 team list

Earlier today players started to reveal on twitter that they had been promoted to ECL as extra teams from relegation tournament played in June for Season 45. Following this, Dust2.us can confirm the full current team list of ESL Challenger League for its 46th season, including the likes of Evil Geniuses, Bad News Bears, and Reason.

In total, only three teams are leaving ECL following last season. This first of those is paiN who lost the majority of their line up since the end of June and currently only have two players. A similar story follows Strife who lost all but Ian "motm" Hardy following the end of Season 45. The one team not leaving due to roster disbandment is MIBR who opted to step away from the league in pursuit of competition in Europe instead.

A fourth team was also expected to be vacating the league, however, the American organization Evil Geniuses are still currently listed as a participant for Season 46 in internal ESL documents. This comes as a surprises as many expected Evil Geniuses to be a guaranteed vacant slot due to the organization being an ESL Partner Team via the Louvre Agreement and only currently fielding one roster after promoting their EG Black squad.

It is currently unclear whether Evil Geniuses will actually compete in ECL or if this is an oversight by ESL. It is Dust2.us' understanding that a team cannot participate in ECL whilst being an ESL Partner Team due to the permanent EPL slots those teams hold. One option could be that Evil Geniuses plan to revive their Blueprint program and sign a new secondary roster, however, it is unclear how that roster would inherit the EG slot in ECL due to the current 3/5ths roster rule for maintain a slot from season to season.

Apart from the vacated slots, there is one more slot being filled for the season. Usually, there is one place left reserved for any non-partnered team from the most recent ESL Pro League season which wishes to retain a slot in the ECL qualification structure to the next EPL season. With ATK (now M80) already holding a slot and MIBR departing, this slot will be filled via the ECL relegation structure, as usual.

Other changes that have taken place since Season 45 include the disbandment of ATK and formation of M80 from their former core, BHOP releasing their roster who are currently without an organization, and Snakes Den parting ways with their roster during the relegation tournament in June.

Coming in from ESEA Advanced, WITHOUTWARNING swept the lower bracket of the division to qualify directly to ECL. In the relegation bracket, timbermen and the aforementioned former Snakes Den and BHOP squads all retained their ECL slots, with Take Flyte being sent to ESEA Advanced in favor of a new squad in Rocket.

However, due to the previously mentioned four vacant slots left open, the four teams which participated in the relegation tournament but failed to qualify will now also move up into ECL. Those teams were Take Flyte, Torch, No Impact, and REIGN. Since then, all four have either left or found organizations to represent.

Dust2.us has learned that Take Flyte's slot will be migrated to the team recently playing under the Bad News Bears moniker, featuring Joshua "steel" Nissan and Jonathan "Jonji" Carey. However, due to only sharing Umar "Umar" Qaiser between the two rosters, the team will be fielding a mix of at least two of Noah "Nifty" Francis, Nick "nicx" Lee, and Liam "xCAPE" Redmond for their first eight matches to retain the slot.

Of the other teams, Torch's roster has since departed from the organization and are currently playing as "the jungle". REIGN's roster have moved over to newcomer organization OMiT, with Collin "CoJoMo" Moren posting about their promotion to ECL earlier. And as for No Impact, they were signed by British organization Reason in early July, recently adding Sean "Coastal" Thompson as coach.

The current ECL Season 46 team list looks as follows:

ESL Challenger League Season 45 is set to debut on August 15th with a brand new league-retaining regular season format plus expanded playoffs. It is expected the league will conclude in early December with the top two teams qualifying to ESL Pro League Season 19.