ESL officially announced that they will no longer host the ESL StarCraft II Pro Tour..

Famous e-sports organizer ESL (FACEIT Group) announced on Monday through its official X (Twitter) account with regret that from now on, the company will no longer hold the ESL StarCraft II Pro Tour.

According to ESL's official statement, the enthusiasm of StarCraft II players has dropped sharply, continuing to host this event has caused the company's Pro Tour budget and profits to show serious losses.

After careful consideration, ESL can only make the decision to end the StarCraft II Pro Tour immediately.

Despite this, ESL is very grateful to all players, teams, sponsors and fans for their support over the past five years, and promised to continue to support and contribute to the StarCraft II professional e-sports circle.

In fact, as early as 2023, the ESL StarCraft II Pro Tour was already reported to have suffered huge losses. At that time, the total prize pool of the 2023 ESL StarCraft 2 Pro Tour was greatly reduced due to the withdrawal of funds by many sponsors.

Despite this, ESL chose to hold on for two years, but the viewership of the live broadcast of the tournament also showed a cliff-like decline, which made it difficult for ESL to maintain the funds needed to host the StarCraft II Pro Tour.

About the tournament

The ESL StarCraft II Pro Tour is the annual StarCrafft II professional e-sports tournament established by ESL in January 2020. Its main purpose is to set up a large-scale StarCraft II e-sports tournament platform for players of this game to display their talents for long-term.

In order to increase its popularity, ESL also signed a three-year joint partnership with DreamHack and Blizzard's World StarCraft Championship.

As the world's most anticipated StarCraft II e-sports tournament, ESL StarCraft II Pro Tour set a total prize pool of up to 4 million USD for the finals at its peak.

At the same time, ESL also continued the ranking system of the DreamHack tournament as an important indicator to determine whether a team qualifies for another tournament, the Intel Extreme Masters Katowice.

At its peak, the ESL StarCraft II Pro Tour set a total viewership record of 71,794 and 87,479 viewers in 2020 and 2021 respectively.