ELEAGUE has released some set of details of their second season of the $1.4 million dollar league, the list of teams invited, the group stages and the procedure of qualifying. ELEAGUE Season 2 schedule has group stages, preliminary qualifiers for NA and Europe separately. The league begins September 2.
Unlike the first season, the second season of ELEAGUE will see a change in the core techniques to determine the best teams coming out of group stages, instead of getting double points the league will follow a double-elimination system to get out of the group stages.
The number of teams for the season 2 has also been limited to only 16 teams versus 24 teams in the previous season, to diminish the time it takes for the league to finish. The top two teams from each group will then progress to the single-elimination playoffs, which will  be the decider for the grand finals.
The top eight finishers from SEASON 1 were directly put into the group stages and the second set of 8 teams will be derived from preliminary and open qualifying rounds.
“We’ve been very pleased with the performance of ELEAGUE and the significant levels of engagement with our content across all platforms in our first season,” said Christina Alejandre, ELEAGUE general manager and vice-president of esports for Turner Sports.
“We believe this new format will keep our audience engaged with our content from the opening week through the grand finals and be more accommodating to team and player schedules.”
ELEAGUE Season 2 Schedule
Open Qualifiers
- Europe: September 3-5
- North America: September 10-12
Preliminary Rounds
- Europe: September 7-8
- North America: September 14-15
- Format: 16 teams per region / single elimination / four teams per region advance to group stage
Group Stages
- Group A: October 21-22
- Group B: November 4-5
- Group C: November 11-12
- Group D: November 18-19
- Format: four teams per group / double elimination / top two teams per group advance to playoffs
Playoffs
- Quarterfinals: November 29-30
- Semifinals: December 2
- Grand Finals: December 3
- Format: eight teams / single elimination
The list of teams qualified directly to the group stages are:
Fnatic, Virtus.Pro, mousesports, Natus Vincere, EnVyUs, Cloud9, Astralis and Ninjas in Pyjamas. Interestingly SK Gaming has been given a slot in the preliminary North American qualifiers, giving them an opportunity to compete and win the title which was pulled off from them last season because of the SK vs Luminosity controversy.
Virtus.pro beat fnatic 2-0 in the grand finals of ELEAGUE Season 1.
