ESL Pro League Returns to Malta with 3-Year Partnership Extension

It was announced today by ESL Gaming that the ESL Pro League would be returning to Malta to kick off a three-year partnership extension. Following a rocky few years that has seen the ESL Pro League move from pillar to post and switch from offline to online, this partnership brings stability to the league. This deal will see the ESL Pro League remain in Malta until Season 20 wraps up, giving both players and fans an exciting, temperate location in which to enjoy a hugely important CSGO league.

This partnership extension begins with ESL Pro League Season 16, which will commence on the 31st of August. As the biggest and longest-running CSGO league in the history of the game, the ESL Pro League attracts hundreds of thousands of viewers every year. It’s a monumental competition, boasting an $850,000 prize pool, and until 2024, the tournament will be hosted in Malta, thanks to this partnership.

Make Way For Malta

Image Credit: ESL Gaming

For years, Malta has been carving out a presence in the esports industry. While many of the esports events hosted in Malta are at the grassroots level, the extended partnership between ESL Gaming and GamingMalta is expected to propel the nation into the limelight. In the last few years, Malta has been the location of choice for the ESL Pro League on several occasions, but owing to extenuating circumstances, chiefly the COVID-19 pandemic, the plans have always fallen through.

In March 2020, Malta’s travel bans forced the ESL Pro League to migrate to an online-only format. There were promises that Malta would then host all events through 2021, but again, difficulties presented obstructions, and this plan never came to fruition. At the start of 2022, ESL Pro League, poised to take place in Malta, was relocated to Dusseldorf, Germany. Now, with a three-year partnership extension in the bag and no sign of any blockers surfacing, the ESL Pro League Season 16 tournament will be hosted in-country.

It’s an idyllic location for any event, and esports fans will be able to take advantage of all that the Mediterranean island has to offer.

In a statement, Brian Kramer, General Manager of CSGO at ESL Gaming, said:

‘We’ve been a proud partner of GamingMalta for the past two years of ESL Pro League and couldn’t be happier to finally be in Malta to host the upcoming seasons of our premier CS:GO league. Together with GamingMalta, we are not only offering the perfect environment for the best teams in the world, but we continue to underline our core principle of creating a world where everybody can become somebody through activations for aspiring CS:GO players in the region.‘

From September 27th to the 2nd of October, the Playoff Stage of the ESL Pro League will take place in front of a live studio audience. In total, it’s twenty-four of the world’s best CSGO teams spending twenty-six days in Malta competing for the lion’s share of the $850,000 prize pool.

It’s going to be absolutely fantastic, and for fans that can’t make it to Malta, the online CSGO betting experience is just sitting there waiting.