The Blast Premier World Final will be the latest top esports event to take place without a live audience when it gets underway later this month.
The CSGO LAN finals will feature eight big-name teams and be held at the Blast Studio in Copenhagen, Denmark, from December 15th to 19th 2021.
It will feature a $1m prize pool – the tournament organiser’s biggest prize event. Blast Esports is registered in the UK and has offices in London and Denmark.
In a statement on the Blast website, the company said it was “confident and committed to delivering this event on LAN with the current COVID-19 restrictions and guidelines in place, but will continue to monitor the situation as it develops and adapt the event to meet all global restrictions and government guidance”.
The news comes as a new strain of Covid-19 was recently identified, known as ‘Omicron’.
Last weekend, the Blast Fall Final – won by Navi – took place in front of a live audience at Copenhagen’s Royal Arena.
The Blast Premier World Final brings together the top teams from Blast tournaments this year. These are Ninjas in Pyjamas, Astralis, Navi, Gambit, Heroic, G2 Esports, Team Liquid and Team Vitality.
Andrew Haworth, commissioner for Blast Premier, said: “The World Final is the endgame for all teams competing in Counter-Strike across 2021 and the perfect way to crown the best and most consistent team across the last 12 months of competitive play.
“The World Final is the endgame for all teams competing in Counter-Strike across 2021 and the perfect way to crown the best and most consistent team across the last 12 months of competitive play.”
Andrew Haworth, Blast Premier
“The qualifying mechanism for this event means we’ll have eight of the strongest teams competing for our biggest prize pool this year of $1m. We can’t wait to welcome these teams to our studio in Copenhagen and end the year in style.”
In other recent news, UK Rainbow Six personalities criticised the upcoming 2022 Six Invitational for having no live audience.
Other big events including the League of Legends World Championship and The Dota 2 International took place earlier this year without a live audience.
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
