Effective immediately, the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) will cease operations. Therefore, all CPL events currently scheduled for 2008 are hereby canceled.

The CPL was launched in June 1997 with the pioneering mission of promoting and sanctioning video game competitions as a professional sport. For ten years the CPL events experienced increased growth - commencing with a small LAN event in Dallas, Texas, and culminating in world-class competitions across five continents.

However, the current fragmentation of the sport, a crowded field of competing leagues, and the current economic climate have prompted the CPL to suspend its pro-tournament operations. The CPL regrets that this news will disappoint those that were planning on attending the summer and winter events this year.

Many thanks to all of the sponsors and partners that helped CPL establish the groundwork for professional video game competitions. Their vision and pioneering spirit should always be remembered.

- CPL

The above quote is what CPL is leaving as their official eulogy for CPL. You can view the actual post here.

Did we not see this coming? Remember a couple months back when Martijn posted on CAL's website that the league was closing it's doors, only to have CPL refute the post and say that they were hacked?

The real question is, where does this lead America's Army? The CPL has been our only decent LAN that still exists, and now they are shutting their doors. Will their be another LAN to take the place of one of the once-dominating league's Summer LAN?

FuturTech Gaming League is one of the newest leagues available and looks to be a contender for one of the best. With 6 pages and over 100 posts, America's Army has been seeing the most support in their 'Community Requests' forum on the league's forums. The league has their own 'Live Event', which will see it's third year this year. With enough support and enough success of America's Army, if added to the league, perhaps we can work out a deal for them to host a BYOC (Bring Your Own Computer) event.

You can view FGL's Community Request thread for America's Army below:
http://forum.fgleague.com/index.php?showtopic=29