ESL to host more BO3 finals

ESL Senior Product Manager Michael "Cynil" Parsons took to Twitter to announce that the tournament operator will be hosting more best-of-three finals from now on. The changes will affect the IEM tournaments, while the events in Katowice, Cologne and the ESL Pro League series will stick to the old format.

This is something we changed heading into 2023. ESL Pro Tour Championship events such as IEM Katowice and IEM Cologne will remain Bo5 alongside EPT Masters tournament ESL Pro League. EPT Masters tournaments such as IEM Rio, IEM Dallas and IEM Fall will be Bo3.

These changes were adopted by the organizers before the start of the season, but many fans found out about them right before the start of the IEM Rio 2023 finals, which ended yesterday, April 23, with Vitality's victory. If earlier all the tournaments organizer by IEM ended with a best-of-five final, now ESL has changed the format to BO3.

HLTV.org correspondent Josip "brcho" Brtan managed to analyze the recent elite best-of-five finals played. He discovered that the duration of such a series can reach up to 7 hours 32 minutes, considering the break after the third map and technical pauses.

Origin: twitter.com