ESL Pro League Season 4 (shortened as EPL Season 4) was a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament run by

ESL English as a second or foreign language is the use of English by speakers with different native languages. Language education for people learning English may be known as English as a second language (ESL), English as a foreign language (EFL ...

. It was the fourth season of the

ESL Pro League The ESL Pro League (formerly ESL ESEA Pro League; shortened as EPL) is a '' Counter-Strike: Global Offensive'' (CS:GO) professional esports league, produced by ESL. It is based on four regions: Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Oceania, and currentl ...

, and had an overall prize pool of $750,000 . For the first time, the Finals took place in South America –

São Paulo São Paulo (, ; Portuguese for 'Saint Paul') is the most populous city in Brazil, and is the capital of the state of São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest Brazilian state, located in the country's Southeast Region. Listed by the GaWC a ...

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

, from October 28 to October 30. Teams from two continents, North America and Europe competed in fourteen team leagues to attempt to qualify for the Finals. Europe's season began with

FaZe Clan FaZe Clan (formerly FaZe Sniping) is a professional eSports, esports and entertainment organization headquartered in Los Angeles, California, USA. Founded on May 30, 2010, the organization has players from around the world, across multiple game ...

defeating Team X (which later formed into Heroic) and ended with

Team Dignitas Dignitas, formerly known as Team Dignitas, is a professional esports organization based in Newark, New Jersey Newark ( , ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey and the seat of Essex County and the second largest c ...

defeating Virtus.pro in a best of three 6th place decider. North America's season started with

Cloud9 Cloud9 Esports, Inc., or simply Cloud9 (C9), is an American professional esports company based in Santa Monica, California. The company was originally founded as a professional ''League of Legends'' team by Jack and Paullie Etienne in May 2013 ...

defeating

Team Liquid Team Liquid is a multi-regional professional esports organization based in the Netherlands that was founded in 2000. With the release of '' StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty'', Team Liquid signed their first professional players. In 2012, Team Liq ...

and ended with

Immortals Immortality is the ability to live forever, or eternal life. Immortal or Immortality may also refer to: Film * ''The Immortals'' (1995 film), an American crime film * ''Immortality'', an alternate title for the 1998 British film '' The Wisdom of ...

defeating

Echo Fox Echo Fox was an American esports organization. It was founded on December 18, 2015, by retired basketball player Rick Fox, who created Echo Fox after he purchased the NA LCS spot of Gravity Gaming. The organization had expanded into various g ...

. In the finals,

defeated

SK Gaming SK Gaming is a professional esports organization based in Germany that has teams across the world competing in different titles. SK is particularly known for their success in ''Counter-Strike'' (CS) tournaments. SK's Brazilian ''CS'' team won ...

2–1 to become the ESL Pro League Season 4 Champions and take home $200,000 prize money; this upset would also mark the first time a North American won an international premier event since iBUYPOWER won ESEA Season 16 - Global Invite Division in 2014.

Format

The format was slightly different to the previous renditions of the tournament. Each continent featured the top 11 teams from ESL Pro League Season 3, one team from the ESEA Season 21: Premier Division Qualifier, one team from the ESL Pro League Season 3 Relegation, and one team from the Wild Card Qualifier. Teams within each continent played each other twice to determine the top four qualifiers to the Finals in Brazil. There was be a total of nine weeks in this phase of the tournament. All games were played online. Teams that placed seventh to eleventh are automatically invited to next season's ESL Pro League. 12th and 13th place are invited to Season 4's Relegation and 14th place will be placed in the ESEA Premier Season 24. The Finals consisted of twelve teams, six from Europe and six from North America. These teams were separated into two groups. The group stage consisted of every team in each group playing against each other. The top three teams in each group moved on to the Playoffs. The knockout stages were a best of three format. All games in the Finals were played offline. The top team in each group received a bye and automatically moved onto the Semifinals. The other four teams played in the Round of Six. The winners of those two games moved on to the Semifinals, and the winner of the Semifinals moved onto the Finals.

Teams

North America

Broadcast Talent

Host * Tom "Tsquared" Taylor Commentators * Sam "DaZeD" Marine * John "BLU" Mullen * Jason "moses" O'Toole Analysts * Steve "Ryu" Rattacasa * Erik "da_bears" Stromberg Observers * Heather "sapphiRe" Garozzo * DJ "Prius" Kuntz

Standings

The final standings are shown below. Each team's in-game leader is shown first. The rosters that are shown are the rosters that were in place by the end of the season. For instance, Skyler "Relyks" Weaver left in the middle of the season and was replaced with Jacob "kaboose" McDonald. Thus, kaboose's name is shown below and Relyks's name is not shown.

Europe

Broadcast Talent

Host * Alex "Machine" Richardson Commentators * Henry "HenryG" Greer * Mitch "Uber" Leslie * Lauren "Pansy" Scott * Matthew "Sadokist" Trivett Analyst * Janko "YNk" Paunović Observers * Alex "Rushly" Rush

Standings

The final standings are shown below. Each team's in-game leader is shown first. The rosters shown reflect the rosters as they were by the end of the season. For instance, Timothée "DEVIL" Démolon was replaced with Christophe "SIXER" Xia on Team EnVyUS midway through the season. Therefore, SIXER's name is shown instead of DEVIL's. ¹Finn "karrigan" Andersen was on the Astralis until the end of the regular season. However, FaZe Clan acquired the Danish in-game leader before the São Paulo Finals. Since Astralis did not qualify for the Finals and FaZe did, karrigan's name is shown in both Astralis's and FaZe's rosters. ²Team EnVyUs was forced to forfeit its first map to Virtus.pro as two of its players could not log on to their accounts. The second map was played as normal.

Finals

The finalized teams are shown below. Each team's world ranking for October 24, 2016 is also shown.

Broadcast Talent

Host * Beatriz "Bia" Bauer Desk Host * Alex "Machine" Richardson Commentators * Henry "HenryG" Greer * John "BLU" Mullen * Jason "moses" O'Toole * Matthew "Sadokist" Trivett Analysts * Chad "SPUNJ" Burchill * Janko "YNk" Paunović * Luis "peacemaker" Tadeu Observers * Heather "sapphiRe" Garozzo * Davis DJ "Prius" Kuntz * Alex "Rushly" Rush

Group Stage

Group A

¹Team Liquid takes Renegades's spot in the EPL Finals due to Renegades opting out of the trip to Brazil and instead headed to play in the ELEAGUE Major 2017 Asia Minor in

Johor Bahru Johor Bahru (), colloquially referred to as JB, is the capital city of the state of Johor, Malaysia. It is located at the southern end of Peninsular Malaysia,along the north bank of the Straits of Johor, opposite of the city-state Singapore. T ...

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...

. ² Fnatic withdraw from the tournament due to personal problems

Group B

Playoffs

Bracket

Round of 6 Scores

Semifinals Scores

Finals Scores

Finals Standings

References

{{Professional Counter-Strike competition 2016 in esports ESL Pro League Esports in Brazil Sport in São Paulo (state)