ESL UK and Ubisoft are teaming up to bring more Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege action to the ESL Premiership powered by Intel.
They have confirmed two more seasons which will now be exclusively on PC, moving on from Siege’s first ESL Prem on Xbox One.
The new winter season of Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege competition will launch in September 2018, with another season following in spring 2019. The winter season will see eight teams competing for a £10,500 prize pool.
The new season kicks off at 7pm on September 12th and at 2pm on September 16th with two rounds of open qualifiers, which means that any aspiring teams can try their hand at semi-pro competition – along with any teams that played in the first season of Rainbow Six Siege. More info can be found here.
Eight teams will emerge from those open qualification rounds. These will be divided into two groups of four, and will play each other twice every Wednesday in October and November.
The top two teams from each group will qualify for the grand final, which will take place on December 8th at ESL Studio 1 in Leicester.
“ESL want to help Ubisoft build a platform in the UK to slingshot players and teams into the top levels of global competition – and this is just the next step.”
Rob Black, ESL UK
The UK has some solid talent in Rainbow Six Siege. Team Secret, a team featuring British players, reached the Semi-Finals of the Paris Major recently, British host Matt Andrews has hosted several top Rainbow Six events now, and Demo is an up and coming Siege caster from the UK.
Rob Black, ESL UK COO, said: “It’s awesome to see the Rainbow Six Siege competitive scene in the UK go from strength to strength. We’ve got some incredibly talented players in the UK and watching them hone their skills in the Premiership is always really exciting. In the long term, ESL want to help Ubisoft build a platform in the UK to slingshot players and teams into the top levels of global competition – and this is just the next step.”
Chris Place, group marketing manager at Ubisoft UK, added: “We’re proud to be partnering with ESL UK for a second year of the Rainbow Six Premiership. With the move to PC and the addition of a second season this time around, we’re setting the stage for some really exciting local competition this year.
“We can’t wait to see UK/IRE talent grow, develop and hopefully increase the amount of UK involvement in the Challenger and Pro League competitions.”
Any teams that want to enter the forthcoming Premiership seasons can sign up from the UK Rainbow Six Portal at https://play.eslgaming.com.
Ticketing info on the finals will be available soon, and in the meantime you can follow the action on Twitch via https://www.twitch.tv/rainbowsix_uk.
In other news, ESL UK is preparing to run its ESL Arena at the EGX gaming event later this month, which takes place at the Birmingham NEC.
MMORPG Black Desert Online’s Drieghan expansion will be playable at the ESL Arena, with an exclusive first playable demo and free game codes available to attendees.
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
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 worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
