NRG, Reason qualify for ESL Challenger League S47

NRG have started their path to ESL Pro League Season 20 as they won both the ESL Challenger League Season 46 Relegation Play-In and now won their two games of Relegation to join North America's top domestic league. Joining them will be Reason, who had a surprisingly poor season, but rallied in Relegation to reclaim their spot in ECL.

NRG started this entire campaign off the back of the penultimate Cash Cup of the season, where the team finished in 3rd/4th place and earned 22.2 points in the ESL World Rankings. Due to NRG and huge sweaty were tied on points to determine who would enter the event, a play-in was needed which NRG swiftly won.

From there, NRG entered into Relegation needing just two wins to make it to ESL Challenger League and essentially bypassing lots of league obstacles in order to make it to the top spot. First up against NRG was datejust, the domestic CIS squad who finished 2nd in Advanced last season. NRG breezed beyond them 13-3, 13-5 to set up a meeting with LAG. It wasn't too tough for NRG as well as they qualified for ECL Season 47 thanks to a 13-8, 13-1 win.

Reason had a somewhat more challenging path to qualification as they played Pantsu, who finished in 3rd last season in Advanced, in a full best-of-three which saw the team trade map picks as Reason pulled out with a 2-1 victory as they took the decider on Vertigo. Next up were the Bad News Bears, who provided an absolute thrilling map on Inferno. The two sides were enthralled in a quadruple overtime before Reason finally pulled out with a 25-22 win. The squad would then secure Bad News Bears' pick of Anubis to secure their participation in next season's top-flight competition.

As for teams like Bad News Bears, LAG, Rocket, and MIGHT, they all play later tonight in the lower bracket of the competition. Many have looked to MIGHT as one of the favorites to qualify out of Relegation for ESL Challenger League thanks to the number of stars on the team, but an early 0-2 loss to Bad News Bears and Dans "danss" Sils being unable to play Relegation has dampened expectations.

You can follow along with all the action tonight.