Today, esports tournament organiser FACEIT announced the launch of the European FACEIT Pro League (FPL) circuit for Rainbow Six: Siege. This comes after FACEIT took over almost all organisational duties from ESL in competitive Siege earlier this year.
Kicking off on the 25th of August, FPL EU will see a total of 93 European top-flight and lower-league players invited to the circuit alongside two qualified players to compete for US$5,000 every month. Each player will be allowed to stream their perspective, with no observer or per-game official broadcast.
What is FPL?
Having been established in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS: GO) three years ago, the FPL seeks to provide a streamlined and through-path for individual players to prove their skills and ascend to the top-flight. Effectively a Pick-Up Game (PUG), or Ten-Mans (TMs) service at its core, it sets itself apart from generic R6 TMs by having a curated list of invitees as well as a strictly moderated solo-queue.
The league will use an qualification system open to all players, with various paths available to reach the FPL.
Fnatic CS: GO player JW's statement about FPL. (Image: FACEIT)
Paths to Pro FPL
In general, players will need to earn FACEIT Elo through various means in order to make it to the top-100 in the FACEIT Elo rankings and be invited to the FPL Qualifier Hub. Once there, they will compete against one another in private matchmaking for one week and the top-two players in the Qualifier leaderboard will be invited to the FPL.
In order to ensure all players start off on a level playing field for the FPL EU launch, any pre-existing FACEIT Elo will be soft-reset on the 25th of August.
FACEIT Elo can be accrued through one or more of the following methods:
- Open Cups (in partnership with Ubisoft) - Played every Sunday at 1 PM CET (UTC+2), this ESL Go4-analogue will be familiar territory for old amateur competitive players.
- NextRound Daily 'Totally Serious Cups' - Hosted on FACEIT, these cups wil run each weekday (Monday to Friday) from 6 PM CET onwards.
- R6TM Hubs (Solo Queue) - The solo queue of the existing R6TM EU Hubs wil have their queues start at 8 PM CET each day and close at midnight.
- Other Elo-eligible PC FACEIT competitions
Once the top-100 players have been determined through the above paths by way of FACEIT Elo, the first FPL Qualifier will start on the 24th of September and end on the 30th of September.
More details are yet to be announced, including possible FPL circuits for North America like in CS: GO or expansions to Latin America and Asia-Pacific.