ESL is happy to announce the appointment of the former professional Counter-Strike player, Jonas “bsl” Alsaker Vikan, to the position of the global Tournament Director. In this new role, Jonas will oversee the seamless execution of all high profile ESL tournaments, including events in its flagship series ESL One, Intel® Extreme Masters and ESL Pro League.
The global competitive CS:GO league will return bigger and better in 2017, with more teams and regions, a record-setting prize pool, and its first offline finals to be held in the United States. The total ESL Pro League 2017 prize pool will be US$2 million (US$1 million per season) a 25% increase from last year’s US$1.5 million.
The grand finals of the fourth season of the ESL Pro League were held last weekend at the sold out Ginasio do Ibirapuera in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Over 6000 fans attended each of the event days, cheering for their local heroes, SK Gaming, who powered through to the final but ultimately lost to North American team Cloud9.