National PUBG League (NPL), North America’s pro league for PUBG Esports, was introduced earlier this month. And now PUBG’s official site has outlined the structure of the league and how the season shall play out. According to the site, each of the professional seasons will comprise of 3 phases which shall lead up to a Global Championship. Each phase is 8 weeks long, featuring matches from the NPL and an NPL Contenders tier.
To begin with, the 2019 competitive season teams have been broken down into two main tiers, the ‘NPL’: featuring the top 16 teams in the league; the ‘NPL Contenders tier’: featuring the 16 teams challenging for a position in the NPL.
NPL matches will take place for 5 weeks in each phase, and the matches will be broadcasted twice a week from OGN studios for a ‘per-phase prize pool’ of $200,000. On the other hand, NPLC matches will take place online once every week during the 4 weeks of each phase. During this, the top teams will be able to fight for promotion into the NPL.
In the middle of each of these phases, all the teams from the NPL and NPLC will fight it out in a special 1-weekend-only rumble going by the name of ‘NPL Royale’ at OGN studios. The exhibition tournament is not a part of the overall season, but it will allow all the teams to battle it out for a separate prize pool while mapping out the individual teams in the competition.
Coming to the pre-season online qualifier; the first step in the NPL 2019 season will be to determine which teams will compete. Teams wishing to participate in the Online Qualifier for the preseason tournament are required to complete registering for the same by December 7th, 2018. The official NPL rules state team members need to be 18 years or above as of February 1st, 2019, in order to be eligible for participation in the preseason.
The Online Qualifier is scheduled to be held between December 11th to December 16th on Battlefy, and the top 24 teams shall be invited to participate in the preseason tournament.
The event will officially begin on January 7th, kicked off by the first preseason matches to determine which teams will join each tier of competition. A total of 32 teams will be chosen through invitation and online qualifiers for a live face-off from OGN Studios; competing for a prize pool of $100,000. The top 16 teams will then advance to the NPL to battle it out throughout Phase 1 of the season. The remaining 16 teams will be placed into the NPL Contenders tier and have opportunities for promotion into the NPL throughout the season.
The bottom 6 teams towards the end of each phase will have to fight for survival against the top 10 teams in the Contenders league in order to continue holding their spot in the NPL; while the 6 surviving teams will move into the NPL for the next phase of the season to begin. The constant check and balance have been put in place to ensure that only the best of the best is always representing the NPL and that teams who train harder will not have to wait for a completely new season to prove their competence.
Official game settings for the NPL are still being finalized, but for preseason the same settings as those being used in the PUBG Europe League qualifiers will be adopted. Once official, the finalized 2019 universal rule-set shall be shared out.
Summing it up then;
- Top 16 teams from Preseason qualify for NPL
- Remaining 16 teams move on to NPL Contenders
- All 32 teams compete once a phase in the NPL Royale
