ESEA has announced that Season 31 of the ESEA League will be the last to feature Team Fortress 2 in its lineup. After 29 seasons and fourteen LAN events, the league has stated that due to the low number of players and lack of visible growth in the game's scene, the game has been cut to allow ESEA to focus solely on their primary game: Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
The league first began supporting Team Fortress 2 in the winter of 2009, where the game was added to the league's lineup for ESEA Season 2, alongside Counter-Strike 1.6 and Counter-Strike: Source. While originally starting off with an open league, the game was granted an Invite division in its following season, however would not see a LAN final until Season 5.
As the league went on, the Open, Intermediate, and Invite divisions began to grow in population, with organizations such as compLexity Gaming, Evil Geniuses, and CheckSix Gaming signing Invite TF2 rosters for the ESEA Invite division. However, as the honeymoon phase began to wane for the competitive TF2 scene, rosters without organizations began to take hold, with dominant teams such as Classic Mixup coming into view and decimating the competition.
Ultimately, the last team to stand would be froyotech, rising from the remains of iT following a heartbreaking comeback from Classic Mixup in the ESEA Season 15 Invite grand finals. Handily defeating Classic Mixup in Season 16, froyotech cemented themselves as the reigning champion of North American TF2, having won nearly every season since, except in Season 20, when the team were eliminated in the lower-bracket finals by Team SoloUber.
Now, in its 29th and final season, TF2 ends its tenure in the ESEA League, with the next season set to begin on April 23rd. While ESEA's TF2 division has endured over ten years of scrutiny and possible death, the end of the road has finally been reached.
It is currently unknown what league will take the place of ESEA for the foreseeable future.