ESL confirm promotion structure for ESL Challenger S50 and beyond

ESL have confirmed to Dust2.us the details of how teams will be invited/promoted into ESL Challenger League Season 50, the first season to use the Valve Ranking System (VRS), and beyond. These details were confirmed by ESL Product Marketing Manager, Alexander "Aluminati" Rymaszewski, who clarified which teams will make the jump from ESEA Advanced to ESL Challenger League every season.

As first confirmed by ESL's original blog post, eight teams will be invited directly into ESL Challenger League based on the Americas VRS ranking ahead of each season. While the VRS itself does not subdivide the Americas between North and South America, Valve has previously signaled tournament operators are allowed to split invites between the two regions for ping reasons.

For the next eight teams, each season four spots each will be allocated to the ESEA Advanced seasons run during the previous season of ECL. For example, for ESL Challenger League Season 50, the relevant seasons of ESEA Advanced would be Seasons 52 and 53, while for ECL Season S51 it would be ESEA Advanced Seasons 54 and 55.

The team list for ESL Challenger League Season 50 will be filled in the following way, with future seasons using a similar format:

One interesting implication of this slot allocation is that ESEA Advanced 52 will serve as a promotion to ECL S50 despite not featuring any of the ECL S49 teams that are expected to be moved down post-VRS change. As a result, a slew of new teams may qualify to the first season of the VRS-backed ECL, potentially giving those teams a leg up over lower-ranked ECL teams that will play in the Challenger League this season.

This may cause some degree of consternation among teams like Vagrants, Alter Iron, and E-Xolos LAZER who would likely be ranked too low to earn a direct invite as they will have one less season of Advanced to try and re-qualify for ECL.

ESL Challenger League Season 49 is set to start on January 21st.