The tournament organizer is adding a separate prize pool category for organizations as part of the changes.
The ESL FACEIT Group (EFG) announced on Monday new details about its ESL Pro Tour (EPT), including more information on prize money, the introduction of the Annual Club Incentive and the invitation cut-off dates for next year.
Starting in 2025, EFG is splitting an event’s prize money into two categories: player prize money and club prize money. The organizer explained that this change is aimed at fostering an environment where players are “supported by a competitive base salary and well-organized club support structures.”
The prize pool for IEM Katowice and IEM Cologne has been increased by $250,000 to $1.25 million, setting these two events apart from the rest of the EPT circuit. These are also the only two events where the players will get most of the prize money ($1 million for the teams and $250,000 for the clubs).
The other five events planned for 2025 will feature a $1 million prize pool and have a 30-70 or 40-60 split between player prize and club prize.
Below you can find the prize money overview for 2025:
IEM Katowice & IEM Cologne
Total Prize Money: $1.25 million
Player Share: $1 million
Club Share: $250,000
IEM Dallas, Spring & Chengdu
Total Prize Money: $1 million
Player Share: $300,000
Club Share: $700,000
ESL Pro League 21 & 22
Total Prize Money: $1 million
Player Share: $400,000
Club Share: $600,000
Next year, EFG is introducing the Annual Club Incentive, a non-exclusive system designed to reward teams for their contribution to the ESL Pro Tour “in the form of tournament attendance, viewership as well as promotional activities related to ESL events.”
In 2025, the program will reward the 16 teams with the largest contribution with $2.95 million using this formula:
Club Contribution = V x N
Where:
V is the sum of points earned for viewership across EPT tournaments.
N is the total number of EPT tournaments a team has participated in.
Events will be weighted differently based on their duration and the anticipated difficulty of travel. This is the reason why longer tournaments (ESL Pro League) and events outside of Europe (IEM Chengdu and IEM Dallas), though less prestigious, will have more viewership points on offer than Katowice and Cologne.
Organizations can opt-in for the Annual Club Incentive by signing a document, which will be available in the coming days.
EFG explained that the Club Prize Money and the Annual Club Incentive are tied to the company’s forecasted revenues and profits, with 10% of its revenue and 25% of its profit from tier-one CS2 esports being channeled to fund these payouts.
“EFG’s commitment to the Counter-Strike ecosystem encapsulates a financial investment to the long-term health of both teams and players,” said Marc Winther, EFG’s Director Game Ecosystems – Counter-Strike.
“We believe this commitment enables further stability and provides teams the foundation to continue their investment in Counter-Strike and their players.”
Meanwhile, EFG announced that ESL Pro League 21, scheduled for March 1-16, will take place at the ESL studios in Stockholm.
The 24-team tournament will feature team-selected seeding for both Swiss stages and a live ELO rating system that will be dynamically updated after every match.
Below you can find the team invite cut-off dates for the 2025 EPL events, which will be determined on the day when the first Valve Regional Standings are available in a given month:
IEM Katowice 2025: January 2025
ESL Pro League 21: January 2025
IEM Spring 2025: February 2025
IEM Dallas 2025: February 2025
IEM Cologne 2025: June 2025
ESL Pro League 22: July 2025
IEM Chengdu 2025: August 2025
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