ESL has revealed adjustments to the team seeding format for the upcoming ESL Pro League (EPL) tournaments. These revisions will be implemented in the 21st and 22nd EPL seasons, starting in 2025.
The revised seeding approach involves teams in the Swiss stage ranking their opponents based on perceived strength. This self-ranking will serve as the foundation for the tournament organizers to determine team placement in the first two stages of the Swiss system. To ensure accuracy, any outlier votes that significantly deviate from the majority will be disregarded to prevent skewed results.
After the initial seedings are finalized, each team will receive an ELO rating proportional to their seeding position (the higher the seeding, the higher the ELO rating). As the Swiss stage progresses, team matchups will be based on their evolving ELO ratings, which will be updated dynamically after each round. Teams will not face the same opponents more than once during this phase.
This seeding method has been previously employed in major tournaments like IEM Chicago 2018 and IEM Katowice Major 2019.
In addition, ESL recently revealed its Counter-Strike 2 LAN event schedule for 2025, which includes seven events, five of which are part of the Intel Extreme Masters series.
