Electronic Sports League
The Electronic Sports League (ESL) is an European league and platform for game competitions and professional gaming. The ESL got over 4 million registered users from 36 countries in hundreds of games.
History
The page was founded in 1997 under the name "Deutsche ClanLiga". In 2000 the name was changed to "Electronic Sports League". The company's many tournaments are run by volunteer admins. The ESL is one of Europe's largest eSport leagues.
ESL and Jedi Academy
The Jedi Outcast section was opened in 2002, shortly after the release of the game, in 2003 the Jedi Academy ESL section was created and became one of many sections on the ESL platform. Both sections co-existed for a couple of years, but in 2008 the section for Jedi Outcast was closed for good, due to a lack of activity. Even though the exact number of competitive Jedi Academy players was unknown, the ESL made up most of the competitive community in Jedi Academy.
In the ESL any competition was usually held on base servers (Jedi Academy without any mods), but there also used to be MBII and JA+ ladders and cups. Even though the ESL is an European league, players from other continents were allowed to play on most cups. While the Jedi Academy section of the ESL was still active after more than 10 years, the activity dropped significantly in 2014 after the section got moved to a new page and the old forums got deleted, destroying almost 10 years of forum posts overnight. In May 2017 the ESL section of Jedi Academy was shut down but had a short comeback in 2019 until it was shut down again, this time for good.