Team Vitality were crowned Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) Dallas 2025 champions on the weekend to continue what might be one of the greatest win streaks the world of esports has ever seen, let alone Counter-Strike.
British pro William ‘mezii’ Merriman and the rest of his Counter-Strike 2 teammates swept MOUZ without dropping a map, winning 3-0 in the final inside Dallas’ Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Centre.
Vitality hardly broke a sweat during the tournament, as teams were unable to take more than one map against the dominant French organisation. Only The MongolZ in the upper bracket final and Team Faclons in the Semifinals were able to take a single map off Vitality before losing 2-1.
Team Vitality’s Counter-Strike 2 domination
The win over MOUZ was Team Vitality’s 30th consecutive win this year. This means they have beaten Ninjas in Pyjamas’ previous record of 28 wins in a row (excluding best-of-ones) set way back in 2013.
Team Vitality have not lost a LAN bo3 or bo5 since January 24th, 2025, when they lost to Eternal Fire at BLAST Bounty Spring.
In 2025 alone, Vitality’s CS2 roster have won over $2 million (£1.5m) in prize money. Of that money, $1m (£740k) of it was a bonus earned by becoming the first team to win four majors this year, completing the ESL Season 5 Grand Slam.
Vitality have won six consecutive major tournaments in just four months. They are this year’s champions of IEM Katowice, the ESL Pro League, a BLAST Open, IEM Melbourne, BLAST Rivals, and now last weekend’s IEM Dallas.
And the team’s historic streak isn’t over yet.
Next week, Vitality go into the Blast Major in Austin as heavy favourites and they’ll also be hoping to extend their dominant reign all the way into IEM Cologne, one of the biggest CS events of the year, come July.
In my seven years of esports writing, I’ve introuduced esports coverage to newspapers, interviewed some of the biggest names in the industry, and driven viewers mad with the puns in my YouTube scripts. I’m most proud of the latter.
