ESL Pro League Season 7

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 26 is automatically promoted to the professional division. For the last two spots, the two runner ups of season 26 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 6. The final two teams are promoted to EPL Season 7 and the other two teams are demoted to ESEA Premier Division Season 27.

North America's league featured an unusual case. Immortals decided to drop out of EPL after Vito "kNgV-" Giuseppe's contract was cut and Henrique "HEN1" Teles and Lucas "LUCAS1" Teles's contracts were bought out by 100 Thieves along with Lincoln "fnx" Lau. Immortals tried to rebuild its team with its last two members in Lucas "steel" Lopes and Ricardo "boltz" Prass by bringing in João "horvy" Horvath, Lucas "destinyy" Bullo, and Caio "zqk" Fonseca. However, boltz was later loaned to SK Gaming and was projected to become part of the permanent roster, so the team brought in Bruno "shz" Martinelli. However, Team Liquid bought out steel, horvy announced that he would go inactive in search of a better team, and destinyy and shz went back to their old team Tempo Storm. zqk then left the team to join the Brazilian-based YeaH! Gaming. 100 Thieves potentially could have bought Immortals's Pro League license, but the CS:GO project fell through as unspecified members were having immigration issues and then 100 Thieves released its CS:GO squad and then the team announced it would not reach out to any CS:GO team for 2018. Therefore, Ghost Gaming, which was going to be relegated to the Premier League, got a second chance to get back into Pro League by taking Immortals's spot in the Season 6 relegation phase.

Each qualifier featured eight teams. Each region played a double elimination, best of three, eight team bracket.

The Australia-New Zealand (ANZ) season matches will take place from April 4 to 5 and April 9 to 10. The top three will qualify for the APAC finals.

The China region consists of the East Asia countries. The China season will take place from March 27 to 29. The top three will qualify for the APAC finals.

The Southeast Asia season matches will take place from April 6 to 8. The top two will advance to the APAC finals.

The LA LEAGUE will start off with a closed qualifier. ESL will invite eight top teams from all over South America. To fill out the sixteen team closed qualifier, ESL will also host two open qualifiers, from which four teams from each open qualifier will qualify for the closed qualifier. Eight teams will qualify for the South American season. To avoid any consequences with traveling, ESL announced that it would only allow teams in which all players have acquired US visas. Each team was seeded, with the invited teams earning the higher seeds, and set to up play one team in a best of three. The winners of those matchups moved to LA LEAGUE.

The season 7 talent was announced on February 6, 2018.[7]

Host

• Tres "Stunna" Saranthus

Commentators

• Danny "dK" Kim
• Jordan "Elfishguy" Mays
• Jason "moses" O'Toole
• Mitch "Pili" Pilipowski
• Harry "JustHarry" Russell
• Kevin "KaRath" Zhu

Analysts

• Halvor "vENdetta" Gulestøl
• Jacob "Pimp" Winneche

The North American final standings are shown below. Each team's in-game leader is shown first. Rosters reflect what they look like by the end of the regular season. For instance, SK Gaming replaced Epitácio "TACO" de Melo with Jake "Stewie2K" Yip and Team Liquid replaced Lucas "steel" Lopes with TACO in the middle of the season. Thus, Stewie2K's name is shown with SK Gaming's lineup and TACO's name is shown with Team Liquid's lineup.

Team Liquid was the first team to book a spot at the Dallas finals after defeating Splyce in both games as arguably the best team in North America would play in front of its home crowd. NRG Esports was arguably the hottest team by the end of the season and was the second North American team to book a spot in the finals after defeating compLexity Gaming in both maps. OpTic Gaming was the next to earn a spot with two wins against Team Dignitas. Renegades clinched the next day with two wins against the same Dignitas team. Cloud9 was able to take a map off of Rogue to head back to the EPL finals after missing it a season ago. Rogue needed to win all of its games in order to have a chance at a flight to Dallas, but was unable to do so. The defending champions SK Gaming needed to wait until the last day of the season to clinch a spot after Luminosity Gaming lost to NRG Esports and SK defeated Renegades to take the last spot in North America. Rogue was also in contention of making the finals after finishing nearly in last place last season, and had defeated Team Dignitas and needed SK to lose just one map to the Renegades. However, SK barely took the first map in overtime and dominated Renegades in the second to secure a spot.

Team Dignitas had an abysmal season after going winless until week six and only taking two wins and was relegated to the Premier League. After getting last place last season, Ghost Gaming did better this season to stay in ESL Pro League for season eight. Meanwhile, compLexity Gaming had to play in a relegation match after placing in the bottom for the first time in its EPL history. Splyce was also forced to play in relegation matches as reports of Splyce releasing its CS:GO team emerged.

Host

• Alex "Machine" Richardson

Commentators

• Alex "Snodz" Byfield
• Hugo Byron
• Henry "HenryG" Greer
• Jack "Jacky" Peters
• Matthew "Sadokist" Trivett

Analysts

• Chad "SPUNJ" Burchill
• Janko "YNk" Paunović

The European final standings are shown below. Each team's in-game leaders are shown first. Rosters reflect what they look like by the end of the regular season. For instance, G2 Esports had Richard "shox" Papillon at the start of the season, but was later replaced by Oscar "mixwell" Cañellas in the middle of the season, so mixwell's name is shown below.

Space Soldiers was the second team overall and the first European team to qualify for the Dallas global finals after defeating HellRaisers in both maps. Ninjas in Pyjamas clinched the following day after taking the second map against North. Natus Vincere and Astralis also clinched when Ninjas in Pyjamas defeated North. FaZe Clan was able to clinch its spot in the finals after defeating Space Soldiers. North, HellRaisers, and Heroic fought for the last spot in the finals. Heroic was able to defeat AGO Gaming in regulation in the first game, but the second game that went to overtime meant that Heroic needed HellRaisers and North to have both of their games go to overtime. HellRaisers and North faced off in the last day of the season and the first game went to overtime, which North won. However, HellRaisers was able to dominate the second half of the second map and win in regulation, sending HellRaisers to its second consecutive finals and eliminating Heroic and North. HellRaisers won the tiebreaker between Heroic based on having more point in the head-to-head (4-2). On May 9, however, HallRaisers announced that it would not be able to attend the event due to Özgür "w0xic" Eker's visa issues, so Heroic would replace the last spot at the Dallas finals.[8]

Last year's Europe winner, Fnatic, was barely able to hold on to a guaranteed spot for next season. Team EnVyUs, after placing a solid eighth last season, had to play in a regulation series along with AGO Gaming. Team LDLC.com could not qualify for the next season after barely placing eleventh for two seasons in a row and would be sent down to play in the Premier League for next season. mousesports was able to clinch the top spot in the Europe league after defeating Team EnVyUs in both maps and winning the tiebreaker between Ninjas in Pyjamas.

Host

• Ben "SandMan" Green

Commentators

• Matthew "Judge" Brand
• Tim "Brainstorm" Dunne
• Jordan "Elfishguy" Mays
• Stuart "sonic" Rayner
• Kevin "KaRath" Zhu

Analysts

• Iain "SnypeR" Turner
• Mohammed "MoeycQ" Tizani

Before the start of group play, SZ Absolute revealed that it would be replacing Flash Gaming because Flash could not obtains visas to Australia. Eclipse, which placed fourth behind Flash in the China qualifier, was also suspected to be facing visa issues.[9] Less than an hour later, it was reported that Flash Gaming would form a new roster with another Chinese-based organization, ViCi Gaming, to create a new Chinese superteam and would play under the banner Vici.Flash.[10][11]

The final standings are shown below. Each team's in-game leader is shown first. The rosters also reflect the rosters that were active at the time of the event. For instance, B.O.O.T-dream[S]cape's Benedict "benkai" Tan could not play with the team in Sydney, so Leslie "Bobosaur" Soen played as a stand-in for the Singaporeans.

Commentators

• Bernardo "BiDa" Moura
• Pablo "xrm" Oliveira

Analysts

• Otávio "bczz" Boccuzzi
• Luis Felipe "savage" Hessel

The LA LEAGUE final standings are shown below. Each team's in-game leaders are shown first. Rosters reflect what they look like by the end of the regular season. For instance, Furious Gaming was forced to replace meyern in favor of Roberto "Reversive" Themtham due to EPL's having a rule that all players need to be at least sixteen years of age in order to compete, so Reversive's name is shown with Furious.

Unlike North America and Europe overtime rules, LA LEAGUE has no overtime and the game ends at 30 rounds. The team that gets to sixteen rounds first earns three points and the loser gets zero. If the two teams are tied at 15 by the end of the game, each team earns one point.

Midway through the season, YeaH! Gaming and Virtue Gaming, which had just picked up the Dereguedere roster, withdrew from the LA League as the teams had visa issues for their players.[12]

Desk host

• Alex "Machine" Richardson

Stage host

• Alex "Goldenboy" Mendez

Interviewer

• Tres "stunna" Saranthus

Commentators

• Alex "Snodz" Byfield
• Hugo Byron
• Henry "HenryG" Greer
• Jordan "Elfishguy" Mays
• Harry "JustHarry" Russell
• Jason "moses" O'Toole
• Jack "Jacky" Peters

Analysts

• Chad "SPUNJ" Burchill
• Janko "YNk" Paunović
• Jacob "Pimp" Winneche

Observers

• Heather "sapphiRe" Garozzo
• Alex "Rushly" Rush

The format of the group stage will be two groups of eight teams in a double elimination bracket. The teams to win their brackets will move on to the semifinals while the next two teams will be in the quarterfinals.

mousesports was the top feature in Group A after winning the Europe division and the team was in its strongest form ever in team history, winning StarLadder & i-League StarSeries Season 4 and upsetting FaZe Clan in the V4 Future Sports Festival in another tournament win. In addition, it came in a solid third-place finish at the Intel Extreme Masters Season XIII – Sydney. NRG Esports was also in its strongest form as it topped the Esports Championship Series Season 5 North America division; however, NRG finished in a very disappointing 9th place at IEM Sydney in its only premier LAN tournament. Natus Vincere quickly turned things around lead by Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev dominating performances, leading to two runner-up finishes at StarLadder Season 4 and at DreamHack Masters Marseille 2018 after Na'Vi had struggled for the most part of 2017. FaZe Clan was also in the group as after falling short at five straight tournaments, the team finally won IEM Sydney in a sweep, but close series, against Astralis. The defending major champions Cloud9 had a disappointing path after the major after the departure of Jake "Stewie2K" Yip, finishing 9th at StarLadder Season 4 and fifth at three straight LANs, two of which ended up being upsets against the team. HellRaisers managed to sneak into another finals and looked to replicate its playoff run from last season. HellRaisers won the Bets.net Masters: Season 1 over North and a solid third place at the V4 festival, but had no other results to show for. MVP PK was quickly improving in the Asian region under the leadership of legendary 1.6 player Kang "solo" Keun-chul. The Koreans placed 9th at IEM Sydney 2018, but was eliminated by mousesports and had a close map against the Europeans. Its most impressive run was at World Electronic Sports Games 2017, where it split two maps with Team Russia and went to the playoffs over Team EnVyUs and had an extremely close first map against Fnatic in the quarterfinals. Sharks Esports was the weakest team in the finals, but the team managed to pull off two major upsets in the LA League over Isurus Gaming and Furia eSports. mousesports, FaZe Clan, and Natus Vincere were the favorites to move on to the playoffs.

mousesports faced off against Sharks eSports to kick off the season 7 finals. While mousesports was heavily favored in this matchup, it was Sharks to come out on top in the first half with a one-round lead. However, mousesports's terrorist was too much to handle for Sharks and mousesports ran away with it. The anticipated FaZe Clan vs. Cloud9 Major grand final rematch proved to be a downer as FaZe completely dominated the now FNS-lead Cloud9. The last minute replacement Heroic with a lineup that was just recently assembled ran over the red-hot NRG Esports, limiting NRG to just three rounds. Natus Vincere had a close half with MVP PK, but the Ukrainians took down MVP PK's defense in the second half to cruise to a win. FaZe Clan was the first team to guarantee a spot in the playoffs after barely holding off a comeback attempt by mousesports in the first map and then dominating in the second map. Sharks eSports put up a surprise win against Cloud9 in the first map in double overtime, but Cloud9 held off a comeback attempt in the second map and then pulled away the Brazilians' confidence in the third map to survive an initial scare to send Sharks home. Heroic started its best-of-three well by taking map one, with its terrorist side denying Natus Vincere of much success. However, Na'Vi responded on the second map in the second half as its counter-terrorist side shut down the offense of Heroic. In the third map, Na'Vi had a dominant first half, but Heroic an equally dominant half to send the game to overtime. Na'Vi regrouped and was able to clutch out the overtime, denying the comeback and was awarded a playoff spot. MVP PK pulled off a first map upset win over NRG Esports, but NRG bounced by taking the second map as it shut down the Korean side in both fronts. NRG had a much more dominant showing by completely shutting down MVP PK's terrorist side in the first half and finished the team off later on. Heroic moved one step closer to the playoffs by pulling off an upset over Cloud9. mousesports won a close series over NRG Esports to face off against Heroic to decide which team moved on to the playoffs. All four European teams in the group were in the final four of the group. Natus Vincere pulled off an upset series win versus FaZe Clan in the winner's final to clinch a bye in the playoffs while FaZe takes second seed. mousesports was able to defuse the hot streak of Heroic in two maps to take the last spot in the playoffs for group A.

Team Liquid headlined group B by topping the North American division and after a successful run of tournaments, the sudden departure of Lucas "steel" Lopes due to personal issues had the team acquire Epitactio "TACO" de Melo, who had just left SK Gaming. After acquiring TACO, the team failed to qualify for IEM Sydney 2018 and finished in a rough 9th place at Intel Extreme Masters Season XII – World Championship Astralis was also in the group as the current world number one won DreamHack Masters Marseille 2018 and was the runner-up at IEM Sydney. Ninjas in Pyjamas was in the group after finishing second in Europe, but its recent tournaments only showed mediocre results, losing to the inconsistent Heroic, Team Liquid, Fnatic, and the struggling Virtus.pro in a qualifier to IEM Sydney. Renegades exceeded many expectations in 2018 after making the playoffs at StarLadder Season 4 and nearly knocking off mousesports in front of its home crowd at IEM Sydney. Space Soldiers surprised Europe after being in first place for a long time and ended up in fourth to qualify for the playoffs. However, other than a WESG 2017 runner-up performance, Space Soldiers didn't have any other results to prove that it could compete with the best. OpTic Gaming was the biggest question mark coming into the tournament as Shahzeeb "ShahZaM" Khan and Peter "stanislaw" Jarguz left the team and OpTic made the team fully Danish. In 2018, OpTic had zero LAN results as it fell at every online qualifier. SK Gaming was once the most dominating force, but 2018 was a massive struggle for it and appeared even worse after TACO left the team and Stewie2K joined. After a strong major performance at third place, the team suffered upset after upset, losing to Team Liquid twice, Cloud9 at IEM Worlds, losing to BIG and Team Russia to finish in 17th at WESG 2017, struggled against mousesports at DreamHack Masters Marseille 2018, and was upset by TyLoo and Grayhound Gaming at IEM Sydney, which was the tournament the Brazilians had won the year before. SK looked to defend its EPL title after barely sneaking into the season 7 finals. Grayhound rounded up the list. The team finished in second at the CS:GO Asia Summit to MVP PK and upset SK Gaming at IEM Sydney and fell to the eventual champions FaZe Clan. Aside from Astralis, there was no clear favorite to go through to the playoffs.

Team Liquid started off group B with a strong win over Grayhound Gaming as Jonathan "EliGE" Jablonowski showed why many considered Liquid to be the best North American team. Space Soldiers took down a rising Renegades despite having a stand-in in dominating fashion to move on to face Liquid in the upper bracket semifinals. OpTic Gaming tried out its new roster against the world's best, but Emil "Magisk" Reif performed well against his old team and Astralis easily took down OpTic. The struggling SK Gaming went up against the Ninjas in Pyjamas, but crucial mistakes from both teams had the game going to overtime. There, the Brazilians showed signs of revival as SK finally downed the Swedes. Team Liquid was the first team in group B to move on by having a relatively easy win over Space Soldiers. Astralis pulled off a dominant performance despite two comeback attempts from SK Gaming to pull in a spot in the playoffs. In the loser's side, Renegades defeated its compatriot Grayhound Gaming in two close maps to stay alive. OpTic Gaming took advantage of Ninjas in Pyjamas's struggles to move on to face Space Soldiers. SK Gaming was able to stay alive in the finals by eliminating Renegades in a quick 2–0. OpTic Gaming made even quicker work over Space Soldiers in its 2-0 dominating victory. Astralis proved it was the best in the world by easily taking down North America's best in Team Liquid to go straight to the semifinals. SK Gaming won perhaps the most thrilling series of the group stage over OpTic as the Brazilian core finally won a playoffs spot since the addition of Stewie2K.

The two runner-ups from each group will each face off in the quarterfinals. The top seeds in each group will earn automatic berths to the playoffs. The quarterfinals and semifinals will be best of three matches and the finals will be a best of five.

Team Liquid had a relatively easy time in the group stage until Astralis's Nicolai "dev1ce" Reedtz put up a masterclass performance to completely shut down Liquid. The number one overall seeded mousesports had a tough time in the group stage after winning a closer than expected game against Sharks, being thrashed by FaZe Clan, and pulling off two wins in the loser's bracket that might have gone either way. Historically, mousesports's roster has a slight 7-5 map record over Liquid. In the other quarterfinals matchup, the FaZe Clan-SK Gaming rivalry continued. FaZe's captain Finn "karrigan" Andersen had never won a series against SK's captain Gabriel "FalleN" Toledo, but with SK only testing new waters and having communication issues as it brought in the American Jake "Stewie2K" Yip, this was karrigan's chance to finally get a series win over FalleN. FalleN had a 9–0 series lead over karrigan and a 10–0 record on Overpass against the Danish in-game leader.

The first game of the playoffs started off on Mirage, mousesports's pick and best map and the map proved to be a thriller. mousesports looked to take the map late in the game, but and resurgence from Liquid allowed the Americans to get map point first. However, mousesports was able to tie it after thirty rounds to send the game to overtime. Liquid started the overtime strong by taking two of three rounds in the first overtime half and then got to match point, but the resilience of the Europeans pushed the game to a second overtime. The first five rounds went exactly as the first overtime and the game looked to go to a triple overtime. However, Liquid was able to pull through to steal the map away. Dust II was the next map, a map that mousesports was famed for when Nikola "NiKo" Kovač was on the team before transferring to FaZe. However, Liquid rode the wave of momentum and had a dominant first half. Liquid went up 14-4 after winning the pistol round and the two follow-up rounds. Liquid was able to clean up the overall number one seeded team and moved on to the semifinals against Natus Vincere.

FaZe Clan started extremely strong on Overpass against SK Gaming with a 7–0 lead, which included a 1 vs. 4 clutch from karrigan, but SK was able to bring the score within two before FaZe took the last three rounds. FaZe later went up to 13–5, which looked to be the end of SK. However, SK paced itself back into the match and the score later reached a 15-13 scoreline. However, a desert eagle shot from NiKo to take out Stewie2K gave FaZe enough room to take over the A bombsite and eventually Håvard "rain" Nygaard won the duel against Marcelo "coldzera" David in the battle of two top five players as karrigan finally defeated FalleN on Overpass for the first time in his career. FaZe would later expose SK's flaws as it dominated the first half. FaZe booked a ticket to a match with Astralis as karrigan finally had his first series win against FalleN, albeit not with FalleN in-game leading as coldzera had recently taken over the role and the defending champions were knocked out.

Fresh off of its win over mousesports, Liquid looked to move on to another grand finals. On the other hand, Natus Vincere was in its best form ever since picking up Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev from Team Liquid. s1mple's current team was the favored team in the matchup against his former team. Meanwhile, a rematch of IEM Sydney 2018 took place in the second semifinals, in which FaZe won one of the closest 3–0 over Astralis. FaZe was coming off of its high by beating SK Gaming for the first time ever.

Na'Vi jumped out to a massive 8–3 lead before Liquid started to recover by winning three of the last four rounds to keep the score relatively close. Na'Vi later made it 12–6, but Liquid took over from there. Lead by newly acquired Epitácio "TACO" de Melo's entry fragging, the American team took nine of the next ten rounds to reach map point first. Na'Vi won the twenty-ninth round to potentially send the game to overtime, but Liquid denied it and took the first map in regulation. Liquid continued its hot streak by going up 8–0 on Inferno, the second map, before Na'Vi struggled to pull away four rounds in the first half. Na'Vi did better the second half, but could not recover from the damage Liquid inflicted in the first and Liquid moved on to another grand finals.

The second semifinals was supposed to be a potential grand finals matchup, but the series proved to be underwhelming. On the first map, Astralis had a slight 3–2 edge. However, the Danes never looked back after that and jumped to a 12-3 halftime lead. The second half was a simple cleanup of the job they had to easily take the first map. The second map was even more one-sided as Astralis took a 9–0 lead and finished the half with a 13–2 lead. FaZe took four rounds in the second half, but the game was too far out of reach and Astralis moved on to another final.

Both teams looked to win their first EPL title. Liquid's best performance was at the Season 5 Finals, where it placed third, and Astralis's best placement was at the Season 2 Finals, where it placed third when it was playing under the ? banner. With Astralis breezing past the second best team in the world, the Danes were heavily favored to win the series, but Liquid was playing in front of its home crowd.

Astralis came out the door swinging and easily took the first game, allowing just one round to Liquid and made the Americans look worse than FaZe. However, in the second map, Liquid made it close after the first half, taking six rounds. Liquid looked to solve the Astralis puzzle as it was within a couple rounds to win the second game, but Astralis turned its gears on to just about come back on Nuke to take a stranglehold on the series, but Liquid did prove that it could hang with the best. Mirage proved to be another thriller as it went to another thirtieth round and Liquid was down 13–7. Astralis had a 4 vs. 3 advantage and wanted to plant the bomb, but Keith "NAF" Markovic pushed at just the right time and four Astralis members went down and Liquid was the first team at the event to take a map off of Astralis. Liquid looked to be getting stronger as the series went on as the North American team reached ten rounds in the first half on the fourth map. Liquid looked to pull away, but Astralis started a comeback in the second half, where the top Danish team was known for its counter-terrorist side and tied it at 11. Astralis would pull away by shutting down the offense of Liquid to take home its first EPL title.

Between the end of the online season and the start of the finals, several changes took place.

HellRaisers pulled out of the Dallas finals due to Özgür "woxic" Eker's visa problems, so Heroic was next in line to replace the team. In addition, Marco "Snappi" Pfeiffer and Jakob "JUGi" Hansen were transferred to OpTic Gaming as Peter "stanislaw" Jarguz, Shahzeb "ShahZaM" Khan, and coach Chet "ImAPet" Singh officially left the team after the regular season. OpTic also signed former North coach Casper "ruggah" Due to replace ImAPet. To fill in the voids, Heroic brought Patrick "es3tag" Hansen back to the active roster and signed Adam "friberg" Friberg as a temporary replacement. Ruben "RUBINO" Villarroel could not attend the event for Heroic as well, so Jørgen "cromen" Robertsen was brought in as a substitute. Another Turk had visa issues, as Buğra "Calyx" Arkın's visa was denied, so Space Soldiers used Çağatay "DESPE" Sedef, who was on the roster as Space Soldiers was the only top team which had six players on its active roster.