ESEA to reschedule ESEA Elite Season 54 Qualifier to avoid scheduling conflict with FRAG 19

ESEA announced the overarching format for their event series today, seeing the subsidiary of ESL FACEIT Group introduce a new pathway into ESL Challenger League and thus ESL Pro League — the ESEA Elite event series. ESEA Elite essentially serves as a Closed Qualifier for teams to make their way into ECL, making an integral event for the NA scene now that ESEA Advanced no longer offers qualification into ECL.

As such, Elite events will be high priority for teams who would otherwise not qualify for ECL via a Valve Regional Standings (VRS) invite. Therefore, ESEA's choice of date for the first qualifier for inaugural ESEA Elite event, July 19th, drew much criticism as it would see the qualifier clash with the upcoming Fragadelphia 19 LAN.

As many teams have already purchased tickets to the latter event and will be away from home, this scheduling mistake would essentially force teams to miss an incredibly important qualifier. Fortunately, it appears that this messy situation will be avoided as ESEA's Head of Tournament Management Wojtek "cros1k" Moreń told MIGHT's Jonathan "djay" Dallal that ESEA will move the date of the qualifier to resolve this scheduling conflict.

On July 4th, ESEA apologized for the overlap and announced that the NA Elite qualifier will be rescheduled to a "later date."

This is a great example of collaboration between two big players in the NA scene and comes after FRAG previously moved Fragadelphia 19 to avoid a conflict with the qualifiers for ESL Pro League Season 22.