A new and ambitious esports league for women to be hosted exclusively on Challengermode

Female Legends, a well-renowned gaming community for women, has now partnered with Challengermode to launch one of the world's most ambitious women's esports initiatives - the Women's Esports League (WEL). It is a so-called all-female league at a European level wherein only women can participate. The league has been created to give girl gamers a chance to compete and socialize in an environment free from hate and toxicity, where everyone can compete on equal terms.

"Female Legends has been a tournament organizer and community partner on Challengermode for a long time now and we’ve gladly helped them organize various esports projects and competitions aimed at the female demographic. As it’s our mission to make esports more accessible to gamers of all kinds, enabling equal opportunity and diversity among esports players is a given. We're therefore very excited to assist Female Legends in creating and scaling this fantastic esports initiative through our platform."
- Philip Skogsberg, Co-founder & Head of Marketing at Challengermode

The aim of the league is to give women in esports an honest chance to compete on a high level and to achieve their full potential as players and teams. The environment in competitive computer gaming is often very hard and unforgiving against women, mainly as a result of their gender. Women are often faced with all manner of harassment along with an unfair skepticism about their ability. The goal of the Women's Esports League is to level the playing field and improve the status of female esports. In the long run, the vision is to completely decomission the league, as the need for a league for only women becomes unnecessary when everyone can compete on equal terms.

"We are constantly working to make the esports more inclusive and equal. The goal for this league is the same as the goal for our esports community, that it wont be needed at all in the future. We want everybody to be able to compete on equal terms, with no trace of harassment and hate."
- Olivia Mattsson, tour director at Female Legends

Open qualifiers for the league will start in December 2018 and season 1 is set to start in the first quarter of 2019. The prize pool for the first season is going to be around €5,000 (SEK 50,000) and the ambition is to gradually increase the prize season by season as the league grows.

WEL is a sister project to the NEL (National Esports Leagues) framework, an initiative by Challengermode aimed at creating a structure for regular players that enables them to compete in open national or regional leagues and climb all the way to major international professional competitions.