At a press conference, the XMädn Board announced the addition of a new triple-threat all-around tournament at short notice due to the current situation.
Also, a variety of changes coming into effect for the 2025 Season was discussed, including an XLeague expansion.
TripleAthlon introduced
As the World Championship ended much earlier than expected and the XLeague will not resume until December 14, an all-around tournament will be introduced to bridge the gap. It is scheduled to start the next weekend and will feature games following the three most common sets of rules: 3T, GP and 3T+.
The “TripleAthlon” will be a non-recurring event with no ranking points at stake and a points target of 7 as playing distance. Winning a single game under 3T/3T+ rules will score two points. If GP rules are used, one point each will be awarded for first place and to the first player to bring home both allied colors. Once a player scores his seventh point, the tournament will end.
The tournament will be played in the order of play changed for the 2025 season, which will give the protagonists the opportunity to prepare for the new playing situation. For this, Nici and Harry will have to swap their previous colors, as medal winner Sissy has decided to keep hers.
“Major” distances cut
The playing distances for the three “Majors” and the GP Holiday Series will be reduced.
By this, XMädn hopes to gain more flexibility in scheduling and create more free time for the players. XMädn also hold out hopes to increase excitement as longer distances have seemed to heavily benefit Sissy who has won all the “Majors” played so far plus all three “Holiday” titles in 2024.
The 2025 World Masters will be played as a “first-to-5” series in 2025, which means that the distance of this tournament will once again be reduced by one single-game win. At the tournament’s first edition in 2023, seven wins were required to win the trophy.
The GP World Series will be reduced by 3 games to 13 games for 2025. Back in 2023, as many as 20 games were scheduled. The distance for the 2025 edition of the GP Holiday Series will be cut from eight to seven. Due to this, the distances of the Grand-Prix sub-season will be equal to the maximum distances of the Masters sub-season.
Also, the distance of the 2025 World Championship will be cut. In future, players will only have to win seven single games instead of ten to land the trophy at the season’s most prestigious event, which, presumably, will remain the longest tournament with a maximum of 19 games.
XLeague expansion
In 2025, two XLeague seasons shall be played, namely the Masters XLeague (2T+ rules) and the Championship XLeague (2T rules).
The the first XLeague season will be played between the Masters and the Grand-Prix sub-seasons, the second after the championship sub-season to see out the year. A new trophy will not be introduced; instead, the current trophy will be at stake with both XLeague seasons of the year.
To make room for the expanded XLeagues, the Challengers Championship and the Double B-Day League are removed from the season schedule. Also, the Round Robin Series will be reduced from six to four DRR while the rules and distances for the Playoff Series remain unchanged.
As under the new circumstances maintaining the 2T Rankings, they will effectively be discontinued as of January 1.
Monday Night MÄDNess
Due to the great success, more games are expected to be moved to Monday evenings, either for the players to have a day off at the weekend or to play three days in a row to speed up the current tournament.