Competitive gaming leagues Major League Gaming (MLG), DreamHack (DH), and the Electronic Sports League (ESL) have announced a partnership for the remainder of 2012 and the upcoming 2013 season. The partnership is for the betterment of eSports, and will include a universal ranking system, unified competition structure, master tournament calender, and cross-promotional efforts.

This is the first time such an initiative has come to fruition between the competing league organizations in eSports. Talks between the head members of the leagues--MLG CEO Sundance DiGiovanni, DreamHack CEO Robert Ohlén, and ESL CEO Ralf Reichert--began at the first eSports Congress in Valencia, Spain last month, which was organized to help alleviate concerns for the industry moving forward. DreamHack and ESL will have their major events overlap next weekend, with the DreamHack Winter Season Finals and the Intel Extreme Masters Singapore event occurring on the same dates.

"The growth of competitive gaming over the last few years has been staggering and we have now reached the point where we need to align our efforts to advance eSports on a global scale," said DiGiovanni. "The collaboration between our organizations is the first step in a united effort to take the sport to the next level while benefiting all of those involved."

"DreamHack’s philosophy has always been about inclusion and never exclusion," said Ohlén. "This joint initiative by MLG, ESL, and DreamHack is something that will insure the continued growth of eSports that we have been seeing during the past 24 months, for the players, the audience and the industry as a whole."

All three league's currently use Blizzard's StarCraft 2 and Riot Games' League of Legends as featured titles, but have said that this partnership is not limited to any one game or genre.

Other leagues in the space such as the IGN ProLeague (IPL) and North American Star League (NASL), who were both present at the Valencia congress, were not included in this partnership. GameSpot has reached out to comment from each organization, but has not heard back from the time of this posting.

More details on the partnership are expected to be released soon.