ESL Pro League Season 9: review and tips

Esports is becoming more and more popular both among fans of different kinds of sports and among people who are fans of various esports games. Interest in it is growing each and every year, similar growth tendency is also kept in sizes of prize money for contestants.

Year by year more and more people are trying to follow results of major tournaments. They watch broadcastings of these tournaments that can be seen not only on the screens of TV sets, but also of your PCs or various mobile devices.

ESL Pro League should be labeled as the most highly demanded esports tournaments. It is possible to get there only after passing a great number of qualifiers in different continents. This is the main professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive league, the first season of which took place in 2015. Next month the final part of the ninth season of ESL Pro League is to start. The French city Montpellier was chosen to be a holding place.

What should spectators expect at the final of ESL Pro League Season 9

The dates of holding the final stage of the tournament are 18 - 23 June 2019. At the main stage sixteen teams are going to meet. The contestants are the following:

• 8 teams from Europe;
• 6 from America;
• one from Asia;
• one from Oceania.

Participants got divided into two groups and each of them will contain eight teams. At this stage the teams are divided according to their positions in the world ESL CS:GO rating. The same principle will be applied for all the matches in the group.

The teams taking the first three places will become participants in the playoff stage. Only participants holding the first place in the group will get to the semifinal directly. Meanwhile, the teams whose results will lead them to the 2-3 places in the groups will meet at the quarterfinal for passing to Four Best. These four teams will fight for the main prize and big prize money.

The prize pool of the ESL Pro League Season 9 tournament will consist of $750 000. The winner will get a third part of the prize money. The finalists will fill their pockets with a striking sum of $110 000. The other participants will not be left behind as well. They are going to own $55 000 each. But these are not all prizes as the teams holding the third places in groups will get paychecks for $32 000.

Battles of the group stage of the tournament will be held in the exhibition center in Montpellier while playoff matches will be held at the stadium Sud de France with a seating capacity of 14 000 viewers.

Participants in the final stage

Nowadays ESL Pro League is considered to be one of those rare competitions where you can get to the final only after passing qualifiers that are held regionally. Here we should mark that European and American qualifiers in season 9 took place offline while qualifiers in Asia and Oceania were held in the former mode.

Teams from Europe got divided into four groups with four teams in each. Games were held up to two wins and resulted in places at the finals for the winning teams while the teams taking the last positions had to leave the championship. Participants in the qualifying round taking the 2-3 places got into two groups with four teams in each. Two best teams got to the final.

Similar situation occurred with the teams representing the American continent. But here at the second group round only winners got their places at the final.

European finalists are:

• Mousesports (European team)
• FaZe (also European roster)
• G2 (France)
• Astralis (Denmark)
• fnatic (Sweden)
• HellRaisers (European roster)
• North (Denmark)
• Heroic (Denmark).

Winners of the qualifier from the American region:

• Team Liquid (США)
• NRG (США)
• Cloud 9 (США)

Brazilian teams DETONA Gaming, MiBR and Luminosity.

Both qualifiers were taking place simultaneously from 12.04 till 23.05 this year.

The winners of the zone in Asia and Oceania are the Australian teams Grayhound and the Chinese team TYLOO.

Tips for the final

Less than one month is left until the tournament begins. However, despite the fact that there aren’t any odds for the winner of the tournament on the leading betting sites, many people are eager to give tips for its outcome. It’s clear that prediction of the results is a thankless occupation, but some suppositions could be made even now.

It’s logical to assume that the main pretendent to win is the Danish Astralis, that won the tournament two last years in a row. The Americans from Team Liquid have a less chance. They took the second place twice at the same tournaments. Also esportsmen from FaZe and G2 also have a hope to win as they also were prize-winners of the previous competitions. In a word, each participant in the final expect the victory and their hopes are not groundless.