ESL release team-selected seeding for EPL S21
ESL have released the team seeding for ESL Pro League Season 21, with the league set to use a novel team-selected seeding approach seen occasionally in previous ESL and IEM events over the years. The system sees each team rank their opponents and themselves before ESL average the results, throw out any extreme outliers, and formulate new standings based on the results.
As can be seen in ESL's graphics, most teams only moved a few positions up or down when comparing team seeding to February 3rd VRS update.
The biggest outlier is paiN, who jumped all the way up to second place, likely due to their strong results at PGL Cluj-Napoca and the team's overall strong results in the past six months.
M80 also jumped up two positions, potentially due to the team being viewed as a competitor than their rocky start to the year on the VRS accounting for. Remember that M80 started the year with Nils "k1to" Gruhne as a stand-in for Ethan "reck" Serrano, thus making the team European and denying them opportunities to earn points in NA.
The biggest loser on the ranking was Portuguese-International squad SAW, who will head into EPL S21 with a new international roster unaccounted for by the VRS. While the Portuguese lineup made playoffs in their "last dance" together at Cluj-Napoca 2025, their new roster with Oscar "AZUWU" Bell and Jan "cej0t" Dyl is a complete unknown.
One interesting tidbit about team-seeding is that according to ESL's Marc Winther, the tournament organizers were explicitly approved by Valve to use the seeding format back in October. It is unknown if Valve will continue allowing ESL to use teams-selected seeding moving forward but it could prove an interesting way to deal with the "lag" in the VRS only being updated once a month.
