StarCraft II Proleague

History

The first major team league for StarCraft professional play, the KPGA Team League, was launched in 2003 by the game broadcaster MBCGame. Its rival, OnGameNet, quickly started its own team league, leading to two competing leagues in the early 2000s. In 2005, KeSPA combined them into a single league called Proleague. SK Telecom T1 dominated the first two rounds of this new league and went on to win the grand finals, becoming its first champion.

The original format had teams alternating between 1v1 and 2v2 matches in a best-of-five or best-of-seven series, but the 2v2 games were dropped in 2008, leaving only 1v1 contests. After that season, the league shifted to a longer schedule, typically running from late one year into the fall of the next. The 2009–2010 season established the modern format, where teams compete in four or five round-robin rounds, and the top teams then enter a single-elimination playoff bracket for the championship.

Before StarCraft II launched in 2010, Blizzard Entertainment had a dispute with KeSPA over the intellectual property rights to broadcast StarCraft games. This was resolved in 2011, with an eSports commentator noting it was a move to open the broadcasting market to StarCraft II. The 2011–2012 Proleague served as a transitional season, featuring both Brood War and Wings of Liberty. Each match alternated between the two games, forcing players to prepare for both.

After MBCGame shut down in 2012, SPOTVGames began broadcasting Proleague alongside OnGameNet. The full switch to StarCraft II came in the 2012–2013 season, which also saw EG-TL, a partnership between Team Liquid and Evil Geniuses, become the first non-Korean team to compete in Proleague. EG-TL had little success and left the league the following season. OnGameNet stopped broadcasting Proleague starting with the 2013–2014 season, leaving SPOTVGames as the sole broadcaster.

On October 18, 2016, KeSPA announced the discontinuation of Proleague, citing sponsorship problems, a shrinking number of professional teams, and match-fixing scandals.