ESEA earlier tonight announced the details around Season 22. Everything you would expect was there, big prize money, more divisions, more emphasis on Europe and incorporating the European scene. However there was one announcement that they had dangled a few years ago as they wanted to help the UK out somewhat or more importantly one of their main admins Aluminati has been trying to do something UK related for a long time.
Well in today’s announcement, it seems that teams now have a choice to play UK only teams as ESEA announced a variety of national open leagues as part of their divisional line up. There is one added catch – teams who compete in the National Open leagues won’t be able to compete in the normal Europe-Wide Open league, so the choice is purely down to you and your team before signing up.
For your team to be eligible to take part in the UK Only division, you will need the standard 3/5 players from the UK otherwise it should be the normal Open division for you. Match times (as far as we are aware) are set for Wednesday & Sunday evenings, however reschedules for matches in the Open League are permitted.
ESEA Announced on their website today:
Registration for S22 is now open and will remain so until Wednesday, May 18th, 2016 at 11:59pm CDT. Once registration closes there will be a few days for teams to get acquainted with the system and to schedule their first matches, which will begin Sunday, May 22nd, 2016.
Key Changes From Season 21 to Season 22:
- Increased prize pot from $100k to $125k+
- Increased number of League servers on new hardware to ease scheduling availability
- Introduction of United Kingdom, Germany, Poland, and France open divisions (eligibility rules have been added to League Rules)
Features of ESEA League include:
- Two matches per week for all divisions
- Recruitment section to find teams and players
- League matches broadcast up to 5 nights a week on ESEA TV
- Every registered team will receive a free ESEA Voice server
- Complete web match scheduling
- SMS scheduling alerts
- All matches played on our ESEA servers across 19 global locations
- Coaching system for all regions and all divisions
- Protection from our industry leading anti-cheat / config locking Client
- Helpful team of handpicked paid league Admins who are active in each community
- Complete box scores and stats for every match
- SpecTV replay downloads for every match within 5 minutes of matches finishing
- Automatic live SpecTV for every match (unlimited number of spectators)
- Automatic POV replay recording
- User prediction system for every match
- You build your permanent league record
Team move ups and move downs, a full prize pot breakdown, as well as the map rotations will be announced within the coming weeks so be sure and check back often. Further details about the Premier division and the addition of the open country divisions will be announced in the near future.
You can of course sign up to the ESEA Season 22 Open League on their platform where you will join the other current number of 28 UK teams signed up to the Open League. We will try and endeavour to cover the ESEA Season 22 Open League for the UK in some form from week to week, so make sure you click away at UKCSGO.com for all the latest scene news.
