2022 ESL Pro Tour CS:GO – COVID-19 is still interrupting the offline Esport tournaments, in China

2022 ESL Pro Tour CS:GO – COVID-19 is still interrupting the offline Esport tournaments, in China – The popular CS:GO tournament organizer ESL released a statement saying that the Intel Extreme Masters China event, which was scheduled to take place in China from December 6th to 11th this year, has been canceled. The main reason for the decision is “the ongoing COVID-19 situation and the complexity of hosting an international competition in China,” reads the tweet from ESL.

Additionally, to avoid conflicting with the Blast Premier Fall Final across Nov 26-27, #ESLProLeague S17 Conference will move to 2023, enabling us to schedule as per our original vision and attaching it directly to EPL Season 17. Full details on the 2023 program TBA soon.

— ESL Counter-Strike (@ESLCS) September 9, 2022

In addition, tournament organizers shifted the ESL Pro League Conference Season 17 to next year to avoid a conflict with BLAST Premier: Fall Finals 2022, which is from November 23rd to 27th. 

This decision was taken due to the situation of COVID-19 which is still strong in the country forcing the government to take strict measures such as implementing strict restrictions in many parts of the country, restricting domestic travel, and other such actions.

2022 ESL Pro Tour CS:GO – COVID-19 is still interrupting the offline Esport tournaments, in China 

While most countries in the Eastern Hemisphere have managed the pandemic quite well and many esports tournaments, especially in CS:GO, have returned to LAN environments with live audiences. Last week, ESL Challenger 2022 was organized in Melbourne, Australia and ESL major 2022 is going to happen in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil at the end of October.

China has recently seen an increase in infections. Government officials have advised citizens in some cities to stay at home in recent days, according to Reuters. According to Worldometer.info, more than 10,000 new infections were also reported in August.

ESL adds that it will “monitor developments in the region from 2023 onwards”. Although China has never been known as a popular place to host CS:GO tournaments, ESL has been one of the exceptions, hosting major events in the Asian country. It organized IEM Shanghai in 2018 and IEM Beijing in 2019. 

Hopefully, the situation comes under their control and 2023 will be an exciting year for the CS:GO Fans and for ESL as well.  

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