As you can see, all esports leagues are esports tournaments, but not all esports tournaments are esports leagues. The main distinction between the two is its duration, with a league generally being run over the span of several weeks while an esports tournament is played at most for a few days. Another difference is that a tournament plays a lot more games during its duration while leagues tend to play a small number of games per week.

Not to mention the difference of terminology. If you were to divide an esports tournament into different groups, they are called “pools” or “groups”. Meanwhile, in an esports league when teams or players are divided into different groups, they are called “divisions”. Similarly, if everyone played each other in an esports tournament, this is referred to as a “round-robin”, but in esports leagues this does not have a name.

Speaking of playing against everyone, an esports league has a randomness factor wherein most leagues each player will not play against every other player, therefore a player who faces less skilled players has a higher chance to move forward in a tournament even if they do not deserve it. Some tournaments account for this and include a factor that gives you points based on the opponent’s win/loss ratio, such as the Overwatch Open Division, although that system has a handful of its own problems.