ESL Pro League, the tournament that happens twice a year and somehow always manages to be a bit dull.

It’s gotten better over the years. It no longer takes up a full month of the calendar each time, and the poor triple-elimination format is gone, but it is still less than ideal.

Either way, this is a newsletter, and there’s news about Pro League, so we need to interrupt the Major hype to keep you informed.

In short, the change is that EU and NA will both have BYOC qualifiers for Pro League, one taking place at Dreamhack Atlanta and the other at Dreamhack Stockholm. The events will have a $10k prizepool, and 32 teams will be able to enter the competition in Atlanta, while 128 will be permitted for Stockholm.

We told you, it’s really not that exciting. Although, we do like the return of BYOC’s at a reasonable level.

Reactions to this news were mixed, but we did like this one from Dust2.us’ editor, Mnmzzz:

Now, Jeff, we appreciate your love for your domestic scene, but come on, mate, there really aren’t 32 teams in NA worth being involved in this event. Judging by the Major, there’s barely even four.

In other news, BLAST have also announced that the finals for BLAST Bounty will take place in Malta, while BLAST Rivals will take place in Hong Kong.

Neither of these things excite us too much – especially after the experiences of the Malta Pro Leagues – but they did also slip one little footnote into the bottom of their announcement regarding Bounty:

BLAST Open’s group stage will now take place online. Right…

Why they’d ever make this change given how people view online CS, we don’t really know, but as always, messioso is on hand to tell us all why it’s especially bad.

What an odd decision.