Today we’re very happy to be able to announce the latest addition to the ESL Gaming Network: ESL Fantasy.  Launched as an open economy fantasy league for the LCS Summer Season, ESL Fantasy will continue to grow into the first multi-game, multi-league Fantasy platform within the eSports community. That means members can look forward to private leagues and different games in the near future.

Get started!

Signing up and setting up your team is incredibly simple. Although you can still join the action once the season has started, those who participate from the start will have an obvious advantage as they can collect points right from the very first match onwards. So don't waste time and head over to fantasy.eslgaming.com to start putting together your team.

To make it easy for everyone, you can sign-up with your existing ESL Account or sign-in with Facebook, Google+ or Twitter. Whichever you prefer. Then simply name your team, click “Join League” and you’re all set and ready to start picking your players. 

Initially, ESL Fantasy will only feature one league: a global one. As such you will have the opportunity to measure your team management skills against everyone else that signs up. So whether you want to beat the teams of your friends, to outperform the team's of Sjokz or Joe Miller or to have the best in the world, you can do it. As the Fantasy League season progresses, new features will be added including the ability to set up private leagues for just you and your friends, so get practicing.

Rules

In order to help you put together a strong team, here a small overview of the rules and features of ESL Fantasy.
 
Every registered user can create and manage one Fantasy Team throughout the LCS Summer Season. Just like regular teams, the fantasy teams need to have one player for each position, so you’ll need to pick a Top Laner, Jungler, Mid Laner, AD Carry and Support. You’re under no obligation to stick to professional players from your region: mix and match players from both NA & EU LCS for the best results. As your players compete in their regular matches, they earn Fantasy Points based on their performance, as indicated in the following table:

 
As with all Fantasy Sports, the true challenge lies not in hunting for the single-best player out there but in assessing your starting budget and buying a well-rounded team. As LCS games are played, player values will rise/fall, which in turn will hopefully enable you to buy slightly more expensive players that you may have your eyes on. You won’t start out with an all-star team… but you might end up with one!

Every team starts out with 5,500 virtual currency which the team manager can use to recruit players. The players have all been valued based on their average performances throughout the Spring Season.  This means players who have struggled will be relatively cheap to pick up, while last season’s star performers like Bjergsen will put a large dent into the team budget.

You can filter player statistics for last games or even last season

Additionally, the value of each player will be adjusted based on his popularity throughout the course of the season. Popular players will increase in price, whilst players less popular will have their value lowered. This aims to encourage people to keep an eye out for the best valued players and actively trade players for the best deals.

More to come

Although fully functional, its best to think of the initial launch as a Beta Test for the system. Along with private leagues, further features and more games are still to come to ESL Fantasy. There might be small tweaks along the way, as the team over at ESL Technologies is interested in hearing your feedback concerning the Fantasy League set-up.

Get started!

Let us know how your team is coming along in the comment section below.