Cover Image Courtesy: ESL Gaming - Bart Oerbekke | Thumbnail Image Courtesy: ESL Gaming - Bart Oerbekke



ESL has announced a ‘long-term’ partnership with 13 organizations which is being referred to as the “Louvre Agreement”. What was previously being called as the “Lanxess Agreement” has now officially been announced, covering both the ‘ESL Pro League’ and ‘ESL Pro Tour’ as two separate projects.





Image Credit: ESL Gaming



The 13 partners teams will have various privileges for an unknown period of time like,





Direct invite to each and every season of the ESL Pro League.





They are together the majority stakeholders of the ESL Pro League.





These teams will also be directly invited for a few other ESL Pro Tour tournaments.





The teams will receive a revenue share from these tournaments, till the time they attend a large enough amount.

The following deal has changed the way ESL Pro League used to operate, now only 24 teams will be participating in the event, out of which 13 will be member teams while the 11 remaining teams will need to make their way through the qualifier i.e. Moutain Dew League or through the ESL Rankings, hence changing every season.





[Also Read: "Affected Teams" to be given two Chances to Qualify for ESL Pro League Season 12]

Also, there will now only be one ‘single global division’ and no ‘relegation system’ in place, because of this the competition within the qualifiers is surely going to increase with not many teams getting a chance to play in the Pro League.

For the current season of ESL Pro League, this is how the teams have been shortlisted,





Image Credit: ESL Gaming





The ESL Pro League Season 11 is all set to start from 16th March with the 24 participating teams being divided into four groups of 6 teams each. Each group will be following a best-of-three round-robin format, with the winners of each group getting a chance to make it through to semifinals.





Image Credit: ESL Gaming



The 2nd and 3rd placed teams from each group will proceed to the Playoffs, which will take place in an arena starting from the quarterfinals. The grand finals will be a best-of-five series with the winner taking the lions share of the $750,000 prize pool.

Sebastian Weishaar - ESL’s Chief Product Officer said that “It (Louvre Agreement) will build a platform to create stability and growth, without sacrificing the ability for new teams and players to climb to the top.”



