The new league, National ESL, will focus on North American eSports with a release date of July 5th.

NEW YORK- In preparation for the 2010 qualification of Intel Extreme Masters, Turtle Entertainment releases its new league for North America, National Electronic Sports League (National ESL).  The league will feature major community leaders to run its league operations with a focus on building from inside the community.

Leading National ESL will be Trevor “Midway” Schmidt, founder and former owner of GotFrag.com.  Schmidt established and created the community around GotFrag while building one of the strongest brands in eSports.  He is considered by many to be one of the key community members in eSports.   Schmidt will head a team made up of famous league administrator including John Clark and Steve “xterm” Devaney who founded and run AGP Tour, a well known Quake tournament.

"I have been looking for an opportunity to make an impact on eSports in the USA in a way that can be meaningful and help push eSports forward,” said Schmidt, National Head of National ESL. “This is a real opportunity to take advantage of ESL’s success and expand the company into North American eSports and help improve one of the biggest events in the eSports calendar in Intel Extreme Masters for North America."

The new National ESL will use the existing ESL website system which currently supports 1.6 million unique visitors per month, due to over 2,500,000 ESL members. Each year ESL conducts over 100 eSports events while hosting 400,000 matches in its website per month.  

National ESL’s new website will go live on July 5th with the release of Intel Extreme Master’s North American Qualification information including its North American LAN Finals and prize money.

Taken from: www.nationalesl.com