Season 2 is here!
IT’S FINALLY HERE! The second season of our own beloved Baltic eSports League has arrived! Season 2 comes with more teams, bigger prize pool, a slight change in the regular season format and, of course, the first time teams have the chance of getting into the league by playing the open qualifiers! Without a further ado - let’s talk details!
More teams
As mentioned above - Season 2 of Baltic eSports League is going to feature more teams than the previous iteration. As of now, we’ve opened the doors to our League to 6 more teams, meaning that the total amount of teams participating in the second season is going to be 16 compared to first season’s 10!
With that being said, here is the list of teams that have maintained their spot in the league from the previous season:
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WASD Sports
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SkitLite
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SkinLordz
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*MightyWolves (ex-Team SPLY) have taken the place of MALCO as MALCO have decided not to continue their journey in our league
The 8 remaining teams are going to be decided via the open qualifiers. Read more about them further down below!
Bigger prize pool
With the expansion of teams in our League, we’re also growing our prize pool and for the Season 2 of Baltic eSports League it’s going to be set at a whooping €9,000, which is a €2,000 increase compared to the €7,000 prize pool that the first season had!
The €9,000 Season 2 prize pool is going to be distributed as following:
1st place - €2,200
2nd place - €1,400
3rd-4th place - €900
5th place - €550
6th place - €500
7th place - €450
8th place - €400
9th place - €350
10th place - €300
11th place - €250
12th place - €200
13th place - €150
14th place - €150
15th place - €150
16th place - €150
A different regular season format
With the increased number of teams featured in the league it’s only obvious that the regular season format has to change. First of all - there is going to be a slight decrease in the length of the regular season. The second season’s online portion of the competition is going to be played out in the time period of 8 weeks compared to the 9 weeks of the first season!
Secondly - the increase in the amount of teams also changes the regular season play format from a 10 team Double-Header round robin to a 16 team Best-of-1 round robin. With that, and the change of league’s length in mind, every team is going to play 2 matches per week for the first 7 weeks, and 1 match in the last, 8th week of the competition, totaling to 15 games played over the time period of 8 weeks. As a comparison - in the first season of our competition teams played 18 games over the time period of 9 weeks.
Team relegation and LAN Finals
With our League expanding to 16 teams for the second season, we have increased the amount of teams being relegated from the League at the end of the season from bottom 2 to bottom 4 teams. We believe that this is the way to go in order to have a bigger, healthier rotation of teams from season to season.
As for the Season 2 LAN Finals - this event is once again going to feature the top 4 teams of the regular season! As much as we would love to increase this number to 6 or even 8 teams, the event logistics restrict us from currently doing so. Though, this time around the LAN finals are going to be located in Estonia with the HyperTown EXPO now traveling to the Saku Suurhall arena (Tallinn) with the event taking place on 20th and 21st of October!
Season 2 calendar and qualifier details
The Baltic eSports League Season 2 calendar looks as following:
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Open qualifier #1 - 29.07 14:00 Baltic time (registration open from 23.07 till 28.07)
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Open qualifier #2 - 05.08 14:00 Baltic time (registration open from 30.07 till 04.08)
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Regular season - 13.08-07.10 (8 weeks)
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LAN Finals - 20-21.10
As for the details of the qualifiers:
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As you can see - there are going to be 2 open qualifiers both having an entry-fee of 25 EUR per team and a total participant limit set at 32 teams for each of the qualifiers;
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To register your team for an open qualifier you have to visit besl.pro webpage, register an account, create a team via ‘My team’ section, invite your teammates to you team and pay the qualifier entry-fee via ‘My team’ page. Remember that everyone has to link their Steam accounts to their profiles via ‘Profile Settings’ in order to eligible to participate;
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After you have paid the qualifier entry-fee a pop-up window will open within whom you will find an invitation link to BESL Pro Qualifier Discord server that is going to be used communication purposes during the qualifier;
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Both the qualifiers are going to be played out on FACEIT platform using a Single Elimination Bo3 format;
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The 4 best teams (teams that reach semi-finals) from each of the qualifiers are going to acquire a spot in the second season of the Baltic eSports League.
Remember - in order to participate in our competitions a minimum of 3 (out of the 5) players on each team have to be from Baltic states, otherwise the team is not eligible to participate.
Season 2 streams and casters
With the regular season now having a total of 120 games, compared to the first season’s 90, due to various logistics constraints we’re not going to stream all the games. Each week we’re going to choose 10 games (from the 16 total happening that week) that our lovely casters are going to feature on the stream. As for the last week that has only 8 games - all 8 games are going to be featured on the stream!
The casting crew of Baltic eSports League’s second season has not changed! During the online portion of our League you’ll be greeted on the stream by our Season 1 Latvian casting duo of Renārs “Emvy” Dzintars and Renārs “Veneficus” Šēnfelds! As always - you’ll be able to follow all the streamed games LIVE on our YouTube channel!
News article by: Bruno ‘Gekons’ Gailītis
