BLAST Premier, a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) competition series, will play the remainder of its Spring events online-only in response to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
The Spring Showdown will run from May 31 – June 7, with a regional Europe and Americas competition, and a $325K USD prize pool across both. Each region features 10 teams, compiled through a combination of direct invites and qualifiers, which will play as two groups of five in a best-of-one round robin format.
The best performing teams will advance to the BLAST Premier Spring Final (June 15-21), which will again be split between the two regions, with $750K prize pools across both. The Final already has six teams that qualified from the BLAST Premier regular season in February.
The Spring Final was originally conceived as an arena event in Moscow, and RFRSH Entertainment, the company behind BLAST, is now refunding ticket holders. Like the ESL Pro League and Flashpoint, all major CS:GO competitions have had to heavily alter their formats in light of the pandemic, moving from studio-based, single location events to remotely run broadcasts divided by region.
