ESL has renamed its UK Premiership tournaments simply to the ‘ESL Premiership’, and has made the tournament more inclusive to Irish players.
Irish players have always counted as one of the three of five UK players that teams must have in their starting roster, and now ESL has altered its logo to better reflect that.
“The Premiership has always been a tournament meant to represent players from across the UK/IRE but the previous name wasn’t very inclusive of our brothers and sisters in Ireland,” ESL said in a statement.
“We’ve dropped the UK from our name and updated our logo to show that we’re a place for those with similar interests to congregate and watch the highest level competitive gaming that our nations have to offer.
“We’re going to be actively exploring opportunities in Ireland and hope that we can see top level athletes joining us at ESL in the near future.”
Prize pool changes
Another major change for the upcoming 2017 spring splits is the distribution of prize money. It is now more fairly distributed across the board, rather than favouring the top four teams.
“Every team that participates in the Premiership next season will be guaranteed prize money, regardless of where they place in the league.
“We’re going to be actively exploring opportunities in Ireland and hope that we can see top level athletes joining us at ESL in the near future.”
“We’ve changed the prize money distribution for this season in order to make it more sustainable to pursue the dream of becoming a pro gamer.”
There is still £10,500 awarded per game, but it’s now being distributed as follows:
Round Robin Group Stage:
- 1st place: £1,200
- 2nd: £1,050
- 3rd: £900
- 4th: £750
- 5th: £600
- 6th: £550
- 7th: £500
- 8th: £450
Live Finals:
- 1st place: £3,000
- 2nd: £1,500
You can check out last split’s prize pool breakdown here, to see how it compares to the 2017 one.
No more semi-finals
The top two teams from the group stages will advance to the LAN finals in Leicester. This means there won’t be four teams or semi-finals – just a single best-of-five grand final.
Other info
Elsewhere, ESL UK has added a mid-season transfer window to the Premiership.
Also, qualifiers will no longer award prize money, and the qualifiers at the moment aren’t being broadcast.
Qualifiers are open for sign-ups and start today for CSGO (Jan 9th and 10th), and take place on the 11th and 12th for League of Legends.
The seasons will adopt a round robin format, with four ‘home/away’ fixtures per week; Monday for CSGO and Wednesday for League of Legends, two at 7pm and two at 9pm.
Two of these games will be streamed from ESL’s Leicester studio, while the others will be handled by community streamers. VODs will appear on ESL UK’s youtube channel.
Three points will be awarded for two wins, one for a draw and none for two losses.
More details including info on other tournaments – Overwatch and Hearthstone – can be found here.
Broadcasts start at 7pm on Monday January 16th for CSGO (via the ESL CSGO Twitch channel) and Wednesday January 18th for League of Legends (via the ESL LoL Twitch channel).
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He has almost two decades of experience in journalism, and left Esports News UK in June 2025.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He also previously worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation.
