Mentioned in this article
League/Tournament Brands:
- RFRSH Entertainment will operate the BLAST Premier Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament series in 2020, replacing the current BLAST Pro Series.
- The $4.25M USD season will feature Spring, Fall, and Global Final events.
- ESL and DreamHack recently unveiled a competing $5M+ ESL Pro Tour for 2020.
The current Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) BLAST Pro Series will give way to a larger-scale BLAST Premier series in 2020, RFRSH Entertainment announced over the weekend.
The BLAST Premier will have $4.25M in total prizing across the 2020 season, which is more than double the $2M BLAST Pro Series prize pool in 2019. The new format also puts a larger emphasis on open play-in events, allowing any team the opportunity to earn its way into the three finals events.
The season is anchored by Spring Final and Final Final events, which ultimately culminate in the Global Final. Each seasonal final winner will take home $500K, while the Global Final champions will win $1M for the feat.
“Developing our 2020 format and experience has been one of the most exciting tasks since I joined the company. We’ve taken on board the incredible feedback from our show surveys and across the Counter-Strike community. It’s only been 12 months since we were in Istanbul, our second-ever event, and here we are, almost a full trip around the world later and a lot wiser,” said RFRSH Entertainment director of product and experience Nicolas Estrup, in a release. “The culmination of everything we’ve done so far is BLAST Premier—a competitive best-of-three format, where anyone can win the Global Final—enhanced by great storytelling and a fan-focused experience.”
ESL and DreamHack recently announced their own collaborative, larger-scale CS:GO tournament framework for 2020. The ESL Pro Tour will span more than 20 total events, with more than $5M up for grabs. ESL vice president of pro gaming, Michal Blicharz, told The Esports Observer that the new format will allow for an increased focus on storytelling—a point echoed in RFRSH’s release about the BLAST Premier.
The BLAST Pro Series has two events left in 2019: the $250K Copenhagen stop on Nov. 2, and the recently-announced $500K Global Final in the Kingdom of Bahrain on Dec. 13-14.
