Three wins advance, three losses go home, and a strength-of-schedule number picks your next opponent. A primer on the format that now runs esports' biggest qualifying stages.
Open qualifiers, closed qualifiers and regional finals are the ladder between a team's home region and the world stage — every major title runs a different version, and the details decide who gets a chance.
Publisher guarantees, crowd funding and state-backed mega-events: the three funding models behind esports prize pools produce wildly different numbers — and the biggest pool is almost never the healthiest scene.
Play-ins, a Swiss stage and an eight-team knockout: the Worlds format is a month-long funnel that turns twenty qualified teams into one champion — here is how each stage filters the field.
Circuit points — the qualification currency that decides who makes the season finale — turn a year of scattered tournaments into one league table, and every major title runs a different version of the machine.
Four teams, two advance, two losses and you are out — the GSL group format took StarCraft's Korean league structure and turned it into the default way esports sort small groups.