ESL ESEA Pro League S2 viewer's guide

Taking place from December 10-13 inside of ESL's North American studios in Burbank, California (twelve miles from downtown Los Angeles), the ESL ESEA Pro League Season 2 finals feature a whopping $250,000 prize-pool for eight competing teams.

Four teams from each region had to survive a twelve team league in order to advance to the offline finals, and $125,000 has already been given out to both European and North American online contenders.

The format of the event is double elimination, however ESL and ESEA have responded to community complaints and made it so that all matches will be best-of-three at the event. The grand final will also be a best-of-five brawl.

As mentioned, the event has $250,000 up for grabs, with the winner taking home a similar first place prize to that of a major.

1. - $100,000
2. - $60,000
3-4. - $25,000
3-4. - $25,000
5-6. - $12,500
5-6. - $12,500
7-8. - $7,500
7-8. - $7,500

The full schedule for the event is already known and can be found below:

Thursday, December 10
19:00	Liquid	vs.	EnVyUs
22:00	fnatic	vs.	Conquest
01:30	Question Mark	vs.	CLG
05:00	Null element Na`Vi	vs.	Luminosity
Friday, December 11
19:00	Group A winner's match
22:00	Group B winner's match
01:30	Group A elimination match
05:00	Group B elimination match
Saturday, December 12
19:00	Group A decider
22:00	Group B decider
01:30	Semi-final #1
05:00	Semi-final #2
Sunday, December 13
19:00	Showmatch
20:00	Grand final

As for the broadcast talent list for the event, many of the most familiar faces in the scene have been included, as well as a few that will be receiving broader exposure for the first time such as Sean "⁠seang@res⁠" Gares in the casting role and ESEA's Cory "Megaman" Gilbert.

Alex "Machine" Richardson (Host)

 Lauren "Pansy" Scott (Caster)
 Cory "Megaman" Gilbert (Caster)
 Anders Blume (Caster)
 Auguste "Semmler" Massonnat (Caster)
 John "blu" Mullen (Caster)
 Matthew "Sadokist" Trivett (Caster)
 Jason "⁠moses⁠" O'Toole (Caster)
 Robin "⁠Fifflaren⁠" Johansson (Caster)
 Sean "⁠seang@res⁠" Gares (Caster)

 Heather "⁠sapphiRe⁠" Garozzo (Observer)

And perhaps most importantly (which is somewhat worrying), the game will be played on an older version of CS:GO, 1.35.1.0, in order to avoid the complications that have been introduced with CS:GO's newest update as they include a brand new weapon and changed rifling dynamics.

All teams will have their full lineups except for Liquid on the first day, which Jonathan "⁠EliGE⁠" Jablonowski will miss out on and his place will be filled by Mohamad "⁠mOE⁠" Assad instead. The team will field EliGE again in subsequent matches.

The first game kicks of at 19:00 and is a face-off between Liquid and EnVyUs. The action can be found over at ESL's channel and we have other language options over at the match page.

stich writes for HLTV.org and can be found on Twitter