June 2025 competitive digest

June 2025 across ESMO turned on a single club that led CS outright and out-titled the MOBA field in the same month, while a record transfer market pushed even the winners to sell from a position of strength.

The month across ESMO

One club ran through both June brackets. In CS, Anastas Palin banked $2,517,080 and 74 championships, finished 454-29 for a 94 percent series win rate, and took two worldwide $100,000 titles without dropping a series. Its MOBA side did not lead on cash, yet it out-titled that field with 55 championships. Combine the two and the club cleared $3,731,000 and 129 championships across the month, more than any other organization in ESMO on either count, and it is the rare case of one club leading two games at once.

Underneath the leader the two games diverged. CS was a runaway with a tightly bunched chase: Badass Team posted the runner-up cash total at $1,559,670 behind back-to-back 7-0 regional sweeps, while the remaining worldwide and regional crowns changed hands among the pack. MOBA was a genuine three-way race, with Vortex Raijin banking a MOBA-high $1,529,572 and Akuma Team answering on efficiency at 399-55, the pair separated from Anastas Palin’s title haul by margins a single weekend could redraw.

The transfer market tied the month together. Fees ran hotter than the record had shown, cresting at a $610,000 CS signing, and the revealing detail was who sold: two of the clubs winning most were also the ones cashing out starters, moving pieces for six-figure fees while they kept lifting trophies. Six separate CS deals cleared $400,000 inside the month, a level of spending that reads as the chase trying to buy its way level with a field the results were not closing.

Best clubs

On the aggregate ledger the top of the table is not close. Anastas Palin leads ESMO for June on cash ($3,731,000), championships (129), podiums (149) and top-four finishes (170), and it built that line across two games rather than one, running away with CS while out-titling the MOBA field. A club that finishes first on every counting stat, and does it in two disciplines at once, is the clear pick for the month.

The strongest counter is Akuma Team. It sits second on club cash at $2,606,124 and owns June’s cleanest efficiency case: its MOBA side went 399-55, the tidiest loss column of any contender there, took 50 championships, and ran a full round deeper into the playoffs than its rivals, all off far fewer games than the leaders needed. Reward win rate over sheer accumulation and its argument sharpens fast, though 64 club championships and its total earnings still trail the leader by a wide margin.

Two more clubs earn a mention. Badass Team took the CS runner-up cash total ($1,559,670) behind two 7-0 sweeps and was the buyer of the month’s record fee, a side spending hard to close a gap that results alone were not closing. Team Chokecons makes the trophy-conversion case: 50 championships, 84 podiums and 118 top-four finishes at the club level, deeper trophy shelves than several clubs that out-earned it, the profile that wins when you weight silverware over prize money.

So put it to managers: does Anastas Palin’s clean sweep of the counting stats across both games settle June on its own, or does Akuma Team’s efficiency, fewer games, fewer losses and deeper playoff runs, give it the better claim to first once you stop counting dollars and start counting how rarely a club actually lost?

Notable transfers

June’s market did more than set a fee record; it showed the strongest clubs trading from strength. The headline number, beautifulpeaCock87 at $610,000, was the largest move of the month and sent a starter to Badass Team, the club that would go on to finish CS second on money. The more telling deal was a sale rather than a purchase: witz left Anastas Palin for $500,000, the runaway two-game leader cashing out a piece while it kept winning on both fronts.

That pattern reached into MOBA as well. WT | Zeus moved out of Akuma Team for $350,000, the same club whose MOBA side owned the month’s cleanest record selling from the front rather than out of need. The buyers were the chasers: beaUtifuulwolf700 went for $450,000 to a side loading up to climb, one of the larger fees of the window. Whether all that spending finally narrows the gap to the clubs at the top is the question July inherits.

Game digests

For the full month in each game, read the MOBA competitive digest and the CS competitive digest.

ESMO Club GOAT debate

Five months of supported ESMO record now stand behind a club argument, and it opens with what the evidence cannot do. Two games sit inside it, MOBA and CS, and neither prices a trophy the way the other does, so nothing below is normalized between them and no cross-game score is built. Rating movement never arrives, a points ladder reached only CS and only from late May, and it sorts by region rather than by the whole field, so cash won, championships and match record still carry the case. On that footing my pick for the strongest club in the tracked record is Anastas Palin. Its claim is the rarest one here: leading both MOBA and CS in the same month is a thing exactly one other club managed even once, and this is the only club to have done it twice, in May and again in June.

Trace the run. In April it took the decisive half of both games at once, closing on 119 championships and $1,996,910 from roughly half a calendar. In May it led ESMO outright on $4,026,580 and 281 championships, first in its league position, its two boards accounting for every match between them. June repeated the feat and led the whole estate on the counting stats, $3,731,000, 129 championships, 149 podiums and 170 top-four finishes, more than any other organization on each. Both boards carried a continuous line of their own. In MOBA, Anastas Palin out-titled June’s field with 55 championships, 66 podiums and 79 top-four finishes off a punishing 645 appearances, third on that game’s money at $1,213,920 behind two rosters it out-converted. In CS, Anastas Palin was the runaway: $2,517,080, 74 championships, and a 454-29 record that reads as a 94 percent series win rate. It also answered the one charge that had followed it, taking both of June’s worldwide $100,000 opens without dropping a series, the strength-of-field test it kept being accused of dodging.

The alternative I take most seriously is Team Chokecons, because it holds the one thing my pick cannot and is the single club present in all five months. Its CS roster Team Chokecons beat Anastas Palin’s CS side in the final on each of the last three days of April, the only meeting in the record that settled anything between them. June was a chaser’s month on cash, yet that roster out-converted everyone behind the leader, turning $1,413,800 into 38 championships and 64 podiums, and the club line ran 50 championships, 84 podiums and 118 top-four finishes deep. Hold that first place should be earned by beating the incumbent rather than out-earning it in a separate bracket, and this club keeps the top with a supplied fact under it. The uncertainty has to stay in the open: that head-to-head is from April and has never been retested. In May the two barely met, in June they split their winning across separate brackets, and Anastas Palin out-earned it by wide margins both times, while its MOBA board has never commanded that game the way its CS roster commands CS.

The peak that still shades the field belongs to Skillbox, which owns the single biggest month anywhere here and the first of only two occasions a club has led both games at once. February closed it on $2,332,890 and 166 championships, earned twice over by Skillbox in MOBA at $1,229,490 and 155 titles on a 674-57 line, and Skillbox in CS at $1,103,400 and eleven titles on 45-3. Two things keep it off the top now. It is absent from May and June, and a case that stops being added to stops being testable; I will not read silence as decline, but I cannot rank on evidence that has stopped arriving. And the club line itself moves under it, since March credits those same two rosters to different clubs, so a multi-month ledger sits over an attribution that shifts, a thing to hold loosely rather than bank.

June also produced the loudest single-month challenger, Akuma Team, which finished second across ESMO on club cash at $2,606,124. Its MOBA roster Akuma Team owns the cleanest efficiency case of the month: 399-55, the tidiest loss column of any June contender, 50 championships, and a run a full round deeper into the playoffs than anyone near it, all off only 473 appearances for $1,493,088. Reward win rate over accumulation and it climbs quickly. But it carries no supported day before June, and one month on a circuit that has grown almost every month is thin ground for a claim this size. The same caution parks Vortex Raijin, June’s MOBA money leader through Vortex Raijin at $1,529,572, and Badass Team, the CS runner-up on $1,559,670 behind two 7-0 sweeps from Badass Team and the buyer of the month’s record fee. Real months, no floor under them yet.

So the concrete question for managers. Anastas Palin has now led both MOBA and CS in the same month twice, a feat the rest of the record managed once and then walked away from, while Team Chokecons owns the only finals that ever separated the two, three of them across the last three days of April, with nothing since to force a rematch. How many more months of Anastas Palin out-earning it in separate brackets would move you off that April result, or does the top of the club ledger stay open until its CS side and Team Chokecons are drawn into the same final one more time?