ESL announce ECL overhaul with massive format changes, VRS compliance

On December 20th, ESL announced their plans for the ESEA League and ESL Challenger League in 2025, with the most important part of these announcements being that from ESL Challenger League Season 50, ECL will align to follow Valve's rules for the Valve Ranking System (VRS). This change will allow teams to earn VRS points in NA's mainstay competition while also significantly changing the format of the league.

The most significant change in making ECL a VRS compliant league is that teams will no longer automatically retain spots in the league between seasons. Instead, for North America ESL will invite the region's top eight VRS teams while a further eight teams will come into the division via ESEA Advanced playoffs.

ESL hopes that these changes will keep the spirit of the league intact while creating an event that is compliant with Valve's requirements. Using today's VRS (December 22nd) and the most recent season of ESEA Advanced (Season 51) as illustrative examples, the team list for ESL Challenger League in the future may look like:

Illustrative Example Only, not for actual use!

Before any freaks out remember that this list is for illustrative purposes only and has a few really important caveats we'll discuss below:

• Realistically Liquid and Complexity would decline their invites as they are likely unwilling to stay in NA for ECL when there will be so many tier-one events next year.

• The Advanced list is essentially nonsense as it is expected any ECL teams that do not make the cut for Season 51 will be thrown into ESEA Advanced meaning that division will have a far stronger field of teams.

As such, these changes will very likely help raise the prestige of ESEA Advanced in North America as well, as you could realistically see strong teams like Akimbo, E-Xolos LAZER, timbermen, Party Astronauts, FLUFFY AIMERS, Undone, and Vagrants need to play in ESEA Advanced to earn spots in the following ECL season.

While this may ruffle some feathers it may make ECL a more competitive division while also making ESEA Advanced more prestigious.

For now though, we will be heading into the final season of old-school ECL, Season 49, which is set to start on January 21st.

ESL's full blog post can be read here.