ESL Pro League Season 6 (shortened as EPL Season 6) is a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament run by ESL. It is the sixth season of the ESL Pro League. The finals moved back to Europe after two seasons and will be hosted for the first time in Denmark. Teams from two continents, North America and Europe will compete in fourteen team leagues to attempt to qualify for the Finals. The regular season for Europe began with Heroic defeating HellRaisers and ended with mousesports defeating Astralis. North America's season began with OpTic Gaming winning against Ghost Gaming and ended with Luminosity Gaming defeating Rogue to clinch the final spot in the finals as the last match Season 6.
The season officially ended with SK Gaming defeating FaZe Clan 3–1 in the best of five grand finals. This EPL title was the second for the SK Gaming roster, with its first with Luminosity Gaming at EPL Season 3.
This tournament was part of the Intel Grand Slam, which is a list of premier tournaments run by ESL and DreamHack. The first team to win four titles would earn an extra $1,000,000. This was SK Gaming's second title, with its first being ESL One Cologne 2017. FaZe Clan (ESL One New York 2017), G2 Esports (DreamHack Masters Malmö 2017), and Ninjas in Pyjamas (IEM Oakland 2017) each had one Grand Slam title coming into the tournament.
Format The format is mostly the same as EPL Season 5.
Each continent will feature the top 11 teams from last season's ESL Pro League Season 5, one team from the ESEA Season 24: Premier Finals and two teams from the Season 5 Relegation, which featured the bottom two teams from each league from Season 5 and the two runners-up from the ESEA Season 24: Premier Finals.
During the regular season, each team will play every team in its league in two best-of-ones. The winner of each game will receive three points and the loser of each game will receive zero points. However, a new point system was introduced this season. If a game ends to overtime, the winner will receive two points and the loser will receive one point. The top six teams by the end of the season from each region will head to the Finals in Denmark. Teams that placed seventh through eleventh will not head to the playoffs but will secure a spot in next season's EPL. Teams that placed twelve and thirteenth will go through a relegation phase, in which those teams will be placed in a four team double elimination bracket, along with teams that placed second and third in the ESEA Season 26: Premier Division of their region. The top two teams move on to EPL Season 7. The winner of ESEA Season 26: Premier Division will automatically be invited to EPL Season 7. The team that came in fourteenth place will automatically be demoted to ESEA Season 26: Premier Division.
The Finals will consist of twelve teams, six from Europe and six from North America. These teams will be separated into two groups. The group stage will consist of every team in each group playing against each other. Unlike last season, the group stage format will differ in that teams will get to choose their opponents. The first seeds of Europe and North American will choose one team they want to avoid. For instance, if Fnatic – the first seed of Europe – wants to avoid SK Gaming in the group stage, SK Gaming will be placed in the opposite group. Then OpTic Gaming, the first seed for North America, will choose one opponent it wants to avoid, which would be, for instance, FaZe Clan and FaZe would be placed in the opposite group. After those two teams choose, SK would be next in line to choose an opponent to avoid then FaZe would do the same and the process would go on until all teams are chosen. The top three teams in each group will play move on to the Playoffs. If three teams are tied for one or two playoffs spot, then the teams will play on Train in an overtime-style best of one tiebreaker. Two teams will be randomly chosen to play in the first match. The winner of that match will play the third team. The winner of the second match will receive a spot in the playoffs. The remaining teams will play in a final third match and the winner of that match will move on to the playoffs. Another change in the group stage is if a game heads to overtime, the winner of the game would get two points and the loser would get one point; if a game ends in regulation, the winner gets three points and the loser gets zero points. In the playoffs, the Round of Six and the semifinals will be a best of three and the finals will be a best of five. The winner of the finals will win the tournament and the top prize. All games in the Finals will be played offline. The top team in each group will receive a bye and automatically move onto the Semifinals. The other four teams will play in the Round of Six. The winners of those two games will move on to the Semifinals, and the winner of the Semifinals will move onto the Finals. The winner of the grand finals is crowned as champion of ESL Pro League Season 6.
Teams North America
SK Gaming (Season 5 #1) Team Liquid (Season 5 #2) Immortals (Season 5 #3) NRG Esports (Season 5 #4) Cloud9 (Season 5 #5) OpTic Gaming (Season 5 #6) Luminosity Gaming (Season 5 #7) Counter Logic Gaming (Season 5 #8) Renegades (Season 5 #9) Misfits (Season 5 #10) compLexity Gaming (Season 5 #11) Splyce (ESEA Premier Season 24) Ghost Gaming (Season 5 Relegation) Rogue (Season 5 Relegation) Europe
North (Season 5 #1) G2 Esports (Season 5 #2) mousesports (Season 5 #3) Fnatic (Season 5 #4) Natus Vincere (Season 5 #5) Team EnVyUs (Season 5 #6) FaZe Clan (Season 5 #7) Astralis (Season 5 #8) Heroic (Season 5 #9) Ninjas in Pyjamas (Season 5 #10) Team LDLC.com (Season 5 #11) GODSENT (ESEA Premier Season 24) HellRaisers (Season 5 Relegation) BIG (Season 5 Relegation)
Season 5 Relegation Before each season, three spots need to be filled up in each league. The team that came in last place in each league is automatically relegated to the premier division for the following season, season 25. Meanwhile, the winner of the premier division's season 24 is automatically promoted to the professional division. For the last two spots, the two runners-up of season 24 of the premier division will be placed in a four team, best of three, double elimination bracket against the teams that placed twelfth and thirteenth in EPL Season 5. The final two teams are promoted to EPL Season 6 and the other two teams are demoted to ESEA Premier Division Season 25.
North America Season 5 Relegation Rush (Season 5 #12) The Foundation (Season 5 #13) Enigma6 Group (ESEA Season 24 #2) Ghost Gaming (ESEA Season 24 #3)
Europe Season 5 Relegation HellRaisers (Season 5 #12) Virtus.pro (Season 5 #13) BIG (ESEA Season 24 #2) PENTA Sports (ESEA Season 24 #3)
North America Broadcast Talent Host Tres "Stunna" Saranthus Commentators Conner "Scrawny" Girvan Mohan "Launders" Govindasamy Danny "dK" Kim Jordan "Elfishguy" Mays John "BLU" Mullen Jason "moses" O'Toole Mitch "Pili" Pilipowski Kevin "KaRath" Zhu Analysts James "JamezIRL" Macaulay Erik "da_bears" Stromberg Observers Efren "encg" Chuong Heather "sapphiRe" Garozzo Codey Ho Carey "frozt" Kertenian DJ "Prius" Kuntz Alex "caLe" Maxwell
Standings The North American final standings are shown below. Each team's in-game leader is shown first.
SK Gaming was the first team to clinch a spot after defeating Rogue twice. The semifinalist from last season and two time major champions looked to win its first premier tournament since ESL One: Cologne 2017 in July. OpTic Gaming also clinched a spot after NRG Esports lost a game to Misfits as the newly formed European team proved that it could go head to head with North America's best. Team Liquid snagged a spot going 1–1 against Renegades and Splyce going 2–0 against Counter Logic Gaming. Misfits clinched a spot after defeating Cloud9. NRG, like past season, did well in the regular season as it took the fifth spot after going 2–0 against Immortals. Luminosity Gaming took the last spot away from Counter Logic Gaming as it went 2–0 against Rogue in the very last game of the season, finally giving Luminosity's new roster a premier international experience. SK forfeited its last two matches against OpTic to give the European team first seed in North America.
The Immortals shakeup hit the team hard as what was formerly Brazil's second best team was in the relegation phase. Ghost performed poorly throughout the season and Rogue showed some promise, but was also relegated. once again managed to secure a spot for the next season. The EPL Season 4 champions. Cloud9, finished in eighth place. Final Standings Place Prize Money TeamW-LRF-RARDPts Roster Coach 1st TBD OpTic Gaming 20-6 340-265 +75 60 friberg, allu, HS, Magisk, ImaPet 2nd TBD SK Gaming 18-8 348-251 +97 55 FalleN, , , , TACO 3rd TBD Team Liquid 17-9 353-307 +46 48 nitr0, EliGE, , , Twistzz 4th TBD NRG Esports 16-10 356-267 +89 47 FugLy, Brehze, AnJ, CeRq, 5th TBD Misfits 15-11 340-329 +8 47 sgares, ShahZaM, SicK, , 6th TBD Luminosity Gaming 15-11 330-305 +25 43 PKL, , NEKIZ, SHOOWTiME, Apoka 7th 27,000 Counter Logic Gaming 14-12 343-337 +6 42 FNS, , , , Rickeh Ryu 8th 23,000 Cloud9 14-12 347-310 +37 41 tarik, , RUSH, Skadoodle, Stewie2K 9th 19,000 Renegades 12-14 347-340 +7 35 AZR, , USTILO, NAF, Nifty 10th 17,500 Splyce 11-15 287-329 -42 34 DAVEY, Drone, , , Semphis Eley 11th 15,000 compLexity Gaming 11-15 333-356 -34 33 Slemmy, , , , Warden 12th 11,500 Immortals 9-17 272-346 -74 29 steel, , , , 13th 8,000 Rogue 6-20 297-395 -98 19 , Hiko, , , Grt 14th 4,000 Ghost Gaming 4-22 246-404 -158 13 CoNnOrRr93, Dallas, WARDELL, ,
Between the end of EPL Season 5 and the start of EPL Season 6 and during EPL Season 6, many changes took place.
Perhaps the biggest change from the North America side came from OpTic Gaming. Tarik "tarik" Celik and Will "RUSH" Wierzba transferred to Cloud9 from OpTic Gaming to replace Jordan "n0thing" Gilbert and Michael "shroud" Grzesiek on its active roster. OpTic signed former longtime Ninjas in Pyjamas member Adam "friberg" Friberg, former FaZe Clan AWPer Aleksi "allu" Jalli, and former North star Emil "Magisk" Reif. In addition, OpTic signed Chet "ImAPet" Singh from Counter Logic Gaming (CLG) as a coach. CLG then signs Selfless Gaming founder Steve "Ryu" Rattacasa as its new coach. After weeks of speculation, OpTic also confirmed the transfer of Kevin "HS" Tarn from PENTA Sports, despite PENTA saying it would not let HS go. HS replaced Keith "NAF" Markovic, who was the last member of the original OpTic lineup. After discussion, ESL agreed that OpTic can play in the North American league this season as long it played seventy-five percent of its matches in the continent; however, next season, OpTic would need to move to the Europe league.