Did RLCS get better since 2024?

I added eight more RLCS and Esports World Cup events to the breakdowns, back to the Copenhagen Major in March 2024. The first result looked like a story: every 2024 event averaged 91 to 92, every event from 2025 on 100 to 102. Nine points in one off-season.

The gap was mostly a bug

Nothing in the raw numbers moved. Goals, shots, touches and time supersonic per five minutes of play were flat from 2024 to 2025. Only the rating dropped, and it dropped in all six categories at once.

Most rating inputs are per-minute rates, so the rating divides by the length of the match. Newer replays store the game clock in a header field called TotalSecondsPlayed. Replays from before early 2025 don't have it, and Unravel fell back to the length of the whole recording, goal replays and kickoff countdowns included. That is about 10% too long, so every per-minute stat of a 2024 match came out about 10% low.

Unravel now falls back to the live-play time it measures in the replay itself. The same fix moved the ranked ladder, whose replays all predated that field: the average ranked SSL player went from 88 to 94 (see why you're hardstuck).

What is left

With the fix, 2024 averages 99.0, 2025 101.0 and 2026 101.1. About two points. 100 is anchored to SSL play from 2025, so a game that moved on a little since 2024 would look exactly like this. Pros did not get two points worse at Rocket League; the yardstick is a year newer than their games.

Eleven events at once

• Rated on its previous events, the higher-rated team won 174 of 279 series, 62%. Team ratings leave goals out, so this is the rating's own call rather than the scoreboard.
• Nwpo was the top-rated player at 6 of the 11 events, for Rule One in 2024 and Twisted Minds since. His best was 122.0 at the Esports World Cup 2025.
• The other five went to yANXNZ, Rw9, dralii, Atow and Seikoo, once each.

Every bracket is on the breakdowns page, and the players and teams pages rank careers across all eleven events.