In this special series of articles, Esports News UK’s coverage of the Blast Spring Final 2024 is in collaboration with the betting partner GGBET UK | Photo by Jonathon Yau
Global Counter-Strike tournament series Blast Premier has revealed plans for a revamped Blast Premier 2025 circuit.
This includes plans to host the Blast.tv Major 2025 in the Moody Center in Austin, Texas, United States next June – the first Major in the US in seven years.
Plus, a Blast Open will take place in Wembley, London, from August 26th to September 7th 2025.
Blast made the announcement during today’s Blast Premier Spring Final in Wembley Arena, revealing prize pool details, event locations and formats for the 2025 Counter-Strike tournament series.
Blast Premier 2025 prizing and stipends for teams
The tournament organiser will also invest $6m into competing Counter-Strike teams and their ‘long-term future’, giving them participation fees for each team attending a tournament, plus £$2.5m in prize money on top of this.
Overall, there will be $4m set aside for participation fees for the year, $2m for a frequent flyers programme and $2.5m in prize money.
There’s more of a detailed breakdown in prizing in this Blast Premier 2025 team earnings article.
New Blast Premier format for 2025
In August last year, Valve announced plans to implement an open Counter-Strike ecosystem from 2025 onwards. Off the back of this, Blast Premier has launched a new format, where each event will be a standalone tournament that crowns a winner.
Every year Blast Premier will run six tournaments, split across two seasons of three tournaments each.
For 2025, Blast Bounty will be in January 14th-26th (season one, spring) and August 5th-17th (season 2, fall).
The Blast Open will take place March 18th-30th at the Altice Arena in Lisbon, Portugal for season one, spring. Then, for season two in the fall, the Wembley Arena in the UK will host the Open from August 26th to September 7th 2025.
The top-level Blast Rivals will run from April 29th to May 4th (season one, spring) and November 11th to 16th (season 2, fall).
More info on these is further in the article.
Andrew Haworth, VP of Ecosystems for Blast, Valve and Riot Games, said: “2025 is shaping up to be Blast’s most exciting year to date. We are delighted to bring North America its first Major in seven years next summer. Austin, Texas is renowned for hosting the biggest and best music and entertainment events in the world. We are proud to bring esports and Counter-Strike to this world-class city, with a best-in-class arena to match in the Moody Center.
“As part of these changes, we have created stronger financial incentives for teams and a framework that will mean the world’s best and in-form teams will be rewarded and encouraged to compete in Blast Premier events. We have an ambition to support a sustainable ecosystem, which means Blast will be investing $6m into competing Counter-Strike teams and their long-term future as part of our payment framework.
Kirk Watson, Mayor of Austin, added: “We are thrilled that Austin has been selected to host the Blast.tv Austin Major, one of the biggest esports events in the world. Austin is the perfect place to showcase the esports industry and the technology at the heart of the competition. We look forward to welcoming teams and fans from all across the globe to Austin.”
Blast Bounty dynamic prize pool
The Bounty will introduce a new format to Counter-Strike, featuring 32 teams coming fresh off the player break. The Bounty will be made up of the top 30 teams from the Valve Global Rankings and two wildcard teams selected by Blast.
Teams will play a Bo3 single elimination, with the first two rounds played online in week one from European servers. The eight quarter finalists will play the second week in a LAN setting from the Blast Studios in Copenhagen, Denmark. These teams will play single elimination Bo3 Quarter Finals and Semi Finals, where a Bo5 Grand Final will crown the Blast Bounty champion.
Teams will come into the tournament with a bounty on their head based on seeding. Teams that secure a win in each match will grab 50% of the bounty won as a guaranteed payout. The other 50% of the bounty carries over to the next match, and gets added to the winning team’s total bounty.
In the opening round, lower ranked teams will get the chance to select who they’d like to play from the highest ranked teams. After each round, seeds are reset based on the previous rounds results, the lower ranked teams will again get the chance to select their opposition from the higher ranked teams.
Blast Open
The Open will see 16 teams compete, with the top 12 teams qualifying via the Valve Global Rankings and the other four spots coming via regional qualifiers.
The first week of the Open will be played from the Blast Studios in Copenhagen, Denmark. Teams will be split into two groups of eight, to play out a Bo3 double elimination format to identify the three teams to advance to the playoffs from each group.
The six teams that advance to the playoffs are then flown into the city hosting the arena final, where they will play single elimination Bo3 Quarter Finals & Semi Finals before a Bo5 final to crown the champion.
Blast Rivals
The Rivals is the battle of the elite, where the world’s top eight ranked teams will decide who is the best of the best. The eight teams will face off in a Bo3 GSL format leading into a single elimination playoff bracket with quarters, semi finals, before a Bo5 grand final.
Andrew Haworth, VP of Ecosystems for Blast, Valve and Riot Games, added: “We’re incredibly excited about the formats we’ve developed and the investment we are offering the teams. We’re focused on doing what we do best, and if we do, I know fans and teams will be excited about and entertained by BLAST Premier tournaments in 2025 and beyond.”
Related article: Last month, Blast revealed its Dota 2 events plan for 2025
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.
