ESL announce a new Pro Tour to complement Valve’s Dota Pro Circuit

ESL Pro Tour, EPT in short, is set to start next month with the best teams worldwide playing in a compact format for a $1M prize pool and tickets to the 2023 Riyadh Masters, which becomes the EPT Championship.

ESL Pro Tour seasons will run under the DreamLeague series and will start with Season 19 in less than a month, on April 9, 2023.  A total of 16 teams from around the world will receive an invite to the EPT based on their placement in an Elo ranking system created by ESL, especially for their Pro Tour.

According to the official announcement, the first ESL Pro Tour will consist of two DreamLeague seasons, each boasting a one million dollar prize pool and each providing slots to the EPT Championship, Riyadh Masters.

DreamLeague Season 19 will unfold April 9 – 23 and only the winning team will receive a direct invite to this year’s edition of Riyadh Masters. DreamLeague Season 20 has two tickets to offer to the $15,000,000 event from Saudi Arabia.

DreamLeague S19 format

Group Stage 1

• Two round-robin groups featuring eight
• Matches are best-of-two
• 1st-4th place teams in each group advance to Group Stage 2
• 5th-8th are eliminated from the tournament

Group Stage 2

• One round-robin group featuring 8 teams
• Matches are best-of-three
• 1st and 2nd place move to Playoff Upper Bracket
• 3rd and 4th move to Playoff Lower Bracket
• 5th-8th are eliminated from the tournament

Playoffs

• 4 teams double elimination bracket
• 2 teams start upper bracket, 2 teams lower
• Matches are best-of-three, except Grand Finals, which is best-of-five

Prize pool distribution

• 1st place – $300,000 – Qualified to Riyadh Masters
• 2nd place – $175,000
• 3rd place – $120,000
• 4th place – $85,000
• 5th place – $52,500
• 6th place – $47,500
•  7th place – $42,500
• 8th – $37,500
• 9th/10th place – $25,000
• 11th/12th place – $20,000
• 13th/14th place – $15,000
• 15th/ 16th place – $10,000

For now, there are no plans on making the DreamLeague portion of the EPT open to live audiences or to be run in a closed studio set-up. The 16 teams competing will be flown to various locations in Europe and will play in an online format for two weeks.