Location São Paulo, Brazil Purse US$750,000 | Teams 28 teams | |
Sport Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Dates August 17, 2016–October 30, 2016 Administrator(s) Electronic Sports League (ESL) | ||
ESL Pro League Season 4 (shortened as EPL Season 4) was a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament run by ESL. It was the fourth season of the ESL Pro League, and had an overall prize pool of $750,000 . For the first time, the Finals took place in South America – São Paulo, Brazil, from October 28 to October 30. Teams from two continents, North America and Europe competed in fourteen team leagues to attempt to qualify for the Finals. In the Grand Final Cloud9 defeated SK Gaming 2-1 to become the ESL Pro League Season 4 Champions and take home $200,000 prize money.
Contents
Format
The format was slightly different to the previous renditions of the tournament.
Each continent will feature the top 11 teams from last season's ESL Pro League Season 3, one team from the ESEA Season 21: Premier Division Qualifier, one team from the ESL Pro League Season 3 Relegation, and one team from the Wild Card Qualifier. Teams within each continent will play each other twice to determine the top four qualifier to the Finals in Brazil. There will be a total of nine weeks in this phase of the tournament. All games will be played online.
Teams that placed seventh to eleventh will be automatically invited to next season's ESL Pro League. 12th and 13th place are invited to Season 4's Relegation and 14th place will be placed in the ESEA Premier Season 24.
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. The top three teams in each group will play move on to the Playoffs. 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 4.
Broadcast Talent
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Group A
1Team Liquid takes Renegades's spot in the EPL Finals due to Renegades opting out of the trip to Brazil and instead headed to play in the ELEAGUE Major 2017 Asia Minor in Johor Bahru, Malaysia.
2 Fnatic withdraw from the tournament due to personal problems