The Relegation stage for ESL ESEA Pro League Season 3 has concluded with three teams involved retaining their spots and one team ascending to the Pro League.

Due to changes in the ESL ESEA Pro League Relegation system, the winners of both the North American and European divisions of ESEA Premier (Denial and FlipSid3 respectively) did not automatically replace the bottom finishing team in Season 2 of the Pro League.

Instead, both Premier division winners had to play in the relegation matches (as well as the Premier League division runner-up in each region) against the 10th and 11th ranked teams from the previous season.

Xp3 achieved 37 kills on the final map of Winterfox's Relegation match (including a final round 1 vs. 2)

The first two games to conclude took place in Europe and we first saw a revamped SK lineup that were able to hold onto their Pro League spot against Publiclir.se with a solid 2-0 scoreline.

ESL ESEA Pro League Season 2 RelegationBest of 3 SKMatchpage 2 0 16th December 2015 Publiclir.se 16Train 1 16Overpass 14

The second European match actually saw HellRaisers lose their much-vaunted Pro League spot to ESEA Premier winners FlipSid3, who were using a stand-in in the form of Vadim "⁠DavCost⁠" Vasilyev (who himself signed for Team YP) for Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev who remains ESL banned for approximately two more months.

The game saw Yegor "⁠markeloff⁠" Markelov and co. defeat their CIS-region rivals fairly smoothly, 16-8 on de_mirage and 16-11 on de_overpass.

ESL ESEA Pro League Season 2 RelegationBest of 3 HellRaisersMatchpage 0 2 16th December 2015 FlipSid3 8Mirage 16 11Overpass 16

The first North American relegation game saw Method utilise Connor "⁠streboR⁠" Roberts for perhaps his last competitive game ever to defeat the challengers that were Peter "⁠ptr⁠" Gurney's SPLYCE team, 16-10 on de_cache and 16-11 on de_mirage.

ESL ESEA Pro League Season 2 RelegationBest of 3 MethodMatchpage 2 0 17th December 2015 Splyce 16Cache 10 16Mirage 11

And the last Relegation game was perhaps the most exciting as ESEA NA Premier winners Denial took Winterfox the final mile in a three map series, with the first two maps going 16-13 and 16-10 for Winterfox and Denial respectively.

It was only on the third map where David "⁠Xp3⁠" Garrido put in a true carry performance, clocking in 37 kills and winning a one-versus-two clutch in the final round of the game to give his team the 16-14 win on de_overpass.

ESL ESEA Pro League Season 2 RelegationBest of 3 WinterfoxMatchpage 2 1 17th December 2015 Denial 16Cache 13 10Mirage 16 16Overpass 14

The teams list for ESL ESEA Pro League Season 3 therefore looks like:

Europe	North America
fnatic	Luminosity
Null element Na`Vi	Liquid
EnVyUs	CLG
?	Conquest
Titan	compLexity
dignitas	Cloud9
NiP	Dogmen (ex-3sUP)
mousesports	Enemy
Virtus.pro	SKDC
SK	Method
FlipSid3	Winterfox
TBA	TBA

Because two more slots are open for grabs in each region, and since the winner of Premier did not automatically move up, it is apparent that these slots will be filled by "a wildcard team chosen by the Administration to replace the auto-relegated team," to quote ESL.

Furthermore, it is widely rumoured that the wildcard teams likely to be chosen are G2 for Europe and Renegades for North America, although nothing is definitive as of the current moment.

stich writes for HLTV.org and can be found on Twitter

Connor 'streboR' Roberts Age: - Team: No team Rating 1.0: 0.97 Maps played: 127 KPR: 0.68 DPR: 0.70 Yegor 'markeloff' Markelov Age: 27 Team: FlipSid3 Rating 1.0: 1.00 Maps played: 674 KPR: 0.67 DPR: 0.64 David 'Xp3' Garrido Age: 28 Team: Winterfox Rating 1.0: 0.90 Maps played: 178 KPR: 0.64 DPR: 0.73 Peter 'ptr' Gurney Age: 25 Team: Splyce Rating 1.0: 1.05 Maps played: 157 KPR: 0.69 DPR: 0.61 Vadim 'DavCost' Vasilyev Age: 19 Team: YP Rating 1.0: 1.01 Maps played: 163 KPR: 0.70 DPR: 0.69 Oleksandr 's1mple' Kostyliev Age: 18 Team: No team Rating 1.0: 1.18 Maps played: 355 KPR: 0.84 DPR: 0.70