ESL Pro League Season 9 (shortened as EPL Season 9) was a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament run by ESL. It was the ninth season of the ESL Pro League. Teams from five continents – North America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and South America – competed in four leagues to attempt to qualify for the Finals. The regular season started on April 12, 2019, and ended in June 2019. This season was also the fourth tournament of the Intel Grand Slam Season 2. The EPL Finals took place in Montpellier, France.
The finals for ESL Pro League Season 9 featured G2 Esports, which defeated FaZe Clan and NRG Esports en route to the grand finals, and Team Liquid, which defeated Astralis and mousesports. The season concluded with Team Liquid defeating G2 Esports three games to one to earn its inaugural Pro League title. This is the inaugural that a North American team has won a premier title in Europe.
Format
This season introduced a vastly different format than other seasons. Instead like last season, which had five leagues, there will only be four leagues: Europe, Americas, Asia, and Oceania.
Europe's league will feature sixteen teams, thirteen of which were automatically invited based on their top thirteen placement from last season. One team qualified by winning season 29 of Europe's Premier Division and another two teams qualified through the relegation phase. The Americas league also had sixteen teams, but instead of just teams based in North America, it will also feature Latin American teams. This league will feature the top nine teams from North America's season 8, the winner of season 29 of North America's Premier Division, and two teams from the relegation phase; there will also be four Latin American teams. Asia's league will feature four teams from the Greater China area and four teams from Southeast Asia. Oceania's league will feature eight teams. Both Asia and Oceania's regular seasons will remain online.
The biggest change came with Europe's and the America's leagues featuring offline regular season play. This format will be similar to a mix of the ELEAGUE Season 1 group stage and the ESL One Katowice 2015 group stage. Four teams at a time will fly out to an ESL studio and play their matches there. For all four leagues, teams will be divided into groups of four teams and play a best of three robin round. For Europe, there were four groups. The winners of each group automatically moved on to the Finals while the teams that placed second and third moved to a second group stage. Fourth place teams were eliminated. In the second group stage, there were two groups of four teams. The top two teams in each group qualified for the finals. For the Americas, the first group stage was the same, but for the second group stage, only one team from each group moved on to the Finals. For Asia and Oceania, there were two groups in the first stage. The top two teams moved on to the second stage. There, only one team from each region qualified for the Finals in France.
Qualifiers
Season 8 Relegation
Europe Relegation
Due to Europe's league expanding to sixteen teams, Ninjas in Pyjamas and Fnatic were automatically invited to this season rather than playing in this relegation phase and AGO Esports played in the relegation phase instead of being automatically sent down to the Premier Division. In addition, Epsilon eSports was unable to play in relegation, so OpTic, which had the best record in Premier, took its place.
North America Relegation
Teams
Europe
Astralis (Season 8 #1) Natus Vincere (Season 8 #2) BIG (Season 8 #3) North (Season 8 #4) HellRaisers (Season 8 #5) mousesports (Season 8 #6) G2 Esports (Season 8 #7) Windigo Gaming (Season 8 #8) ex-Space Soldiers (Season 8 #9) Heroic (Season 8 #10) FaZe Clan (Season 8 #11) Ninjas in Pyjamas (Season 8 #12) Fnatic (Season 8 #13) 3DMAX (ESEA Premier Season 29) OpTic Gaming (Season 8 Relegation) Aristocracy (Season 8 Relegation)
Americas
MIBR (Season 8 #1) Ghost Gaming (Season 8 #2) Team Liquid (Season 8 #3) NRG Esports (Season 8 #4) Renegades (Season 8 #5) INTZ eSports (Season 8 #6) (Season 8 #7) Cloud9 (Season 8 #8) compLexity Gaming (Season 8 #9) Lazarus Esports (ESEA Premier Season 29) Team Envy (Season 8 Relegation) Luminosity Gaming (Invited) (Rogue disbands after StarSeries & i-League CS:GO Season 7. ESL announced the Luminosity Gaming would take its place.) Isurus Gaming (LA League Season 3 #1) Infinity Esports (LA League Season 3 #2) Denial Esports (Latin America North) DETONA Gaming (Latin America South)