ESports ESHL Season 13 Season Format

After 12 ESHL Seasons we are always striving to come up with the best event format. Our new format is trying to solve some key issues that the community, sponsors and we as organizers have expressed.

Those areas are

• The community wants an invite/open system where the top teams play each other
  • How do you solve who's in the invite, and who's in the open?
  • Top players in the community want to play all the top teams. No more random schedules.
• Sponsors want to see growth in terms of teams, signups
• Forfeits. Players/teams quitting after getting destroyed early on and already out of contention for the playoffs.
  
• Parity. The majority of Teams want something to play for. Some "in the middle" players know they have no chance of winning so do not signup. To grow the community more middle to end of the pack players need to jump in to grow their skills.
• A format that has the ability to expand based on team and signup numbers.

Taking experience from our past events, but also taking inspiration from the NHL's Washington Capitals "CapsGaming" event, we believe we've come up with a very unique format to solve all the issues above.

The season of our event will have technically 3 parts. 2 Parts regular season, 1 part playoffs. The regular season is where a lot of the changes come in. This is our regular season format:

• The regular season part 1 will be 3 weeks (20 games, only Thurs in week 1) where all the teams are together and we will use a modified version of the "Swiss Format" we saw in CapsGaming. How it will work is on Wednesday we will give each team 2 opponents to play a home and home (2 games vs that team, 4 in the night) based on how the standings are that day. Instead of a series win, it will be the same Win/Loss/OTL format. Then on Thurs we do exactly the same thing again and create 4 more games (2 vs each team) based on how the standings are that day using the swiss format standings.
  • This swiss format means the top teams will rise to the top and play each other, the middle teams will play each other then eventually the lower end team will also play each other.
• After the 3 weeks, we divide the entire league into the "Invite" and "Open" Divisions. The invite division would be the top 16 teams. The rest are in the open division.
• A set schedule will now be made up. In the invite division, everyone will play each other twice (30 games). The open division would be a random schedule.
• Games are 4 on Wednesday, 4 on Thurs again, You play the same opponent home and home so it should make for a quicker turnaround.
  
• Top 16 in each conference play for their own prize. Open and Invite never will play again. This means there are 2 separate playoff brackets, one for the invite, one for the open.
  
• The playoff format will be "pick their opponent". Meaning the 1st place team can pick who they play in their playoff round. This "pick your opponent" will go all the way through till the semis.
  
• The prize pool will be split 4/1. Meaning if the prize pool was 5k, 4k would be for the invite winners, 1k would be for the open winners

The schedule for this event is the following:

All Game Times for the Wed/Thurs Games are:

Wednesday:

• Game 1 - 9:30 pm Eastern
• Game 2 - 10:00 pm Eastern (same opponent as game 1)
  
• Game 3 - 10:30 pm Eastern
• Game 4 - 11:00 pm Eastern (same opponent as game 3)

Thursday:

• Game 1 - 9:00 pm Eastern
• Game 2 - 9:30 pm Eastern (same opponent as game 1)
  
• Game 3 - 10:00 pm Eastern
• Game 4 - 10:30 pm Eastern (same opponent as game 3)

Dated Schedule:

• Week 1 - March 5th (4 Games, Thurs only, 2 opponents home and home)
  
• Week 2 - March 11th/18t. 2 Opponents on Wed (home and home), 2 Opponents Thurs (home and home) for a total of 8 games.
  
• Week 3 - March 19th/25th (same format as above)
• Week 4 - March 26th

------------ Move teams to Invite/Open based on the standings ------------

• Week 5 - April 1st/2nd. 4 games Wed, 4 games Thurs (home and home vs 2 opponents)
• Week 6 - April 8th/9th. 4 games Wed, 4 games Thurs (home and home vs 2 opponents)
• Week 7 - April 15th/16th. 4 games Wed, 4 games Thurs (home and home vs 2 opponents)
• Week 8 - April 22th/23th. 4 games Wed, 4 games Thurs (home and home vs 2 opponents)
  
• Playoffs Round 1 - April 29th & 30th (All playoff rounds are Best of 7, for both invite and open)
  
• Playoffs Round 2 - May 6th & 7th
• Semis - Live May 13th 8pm Eastern (Best of 7)
• Finals - Live May 14th 8pm Eastern (Best of 7)

So this format solves the problems above, as it sets the invite/open conferences by results. It gives the open conference teams their own bracket and prize pool, it gives teams and players less reason to forfeit early on.

This format could also be expanded upon, you could add a 3rd or 4th conference based on the results of part 1 of the regular season.


TL;DR

We have come up with a very unique schedule format that addresses issues identified below that only LG can deliver.

Regular season is 7 weeks, 3 weeks a modified version of the "Swiss Format". After these 3 weeks, we move to to 2 Conferences of Invite (16 teams) & Open (rest of the teams). Everyone in invite plays a home and home vs each other.

Open division gives a chance for new teams/players to compete for something. Also teams who get off to a slow start early on can still have something to play for in the 2nd half of the regular season.

Playoffs are "pick your opponent".

This format could be expanded upon to a 3rd of 4th tier later on.​