ESL Pro League to feature updated team seeding system

Tournament operator ESL has announced changes to the team seeding system for the upcoming ESL Pro League series tournaments. These changes will come into effect in 2025, during the 21st and 22nd seasons of EPL.

Thus, the initial seeding of teams will be determined by the participants of the Swiss stage themselves. Each squad will rank opponents by strength – on this basis, the organizers will distribute rosters in the 1st and 2nd stages of the Swiss system. At the same time, the individual teams' votes that vastly differ from other ratings will be discarded to exclude anomalies.

After determining the initial seeding, each roster will be assigned its own ELO rating depending on the seeding (the higher the seeding – the higher the rating). Then, in each round of the Swiss stage, teams will receive opponents in accordance with the rating, which will be dynamically updated after each match (while the squads will not be able to play each other twice).

The seeding system described above was previously used at IEM Chicago 2018 and IEM Katowice Major 2019.

Note that a few days ago, ESL announced the calendar of Counter-Strike 2 LAN tournaments for 2025 – it features seven events, including five Intel Extreme Masters competitions.

Origin: pro.eslgaming.com