BLAST Premier Expands Fall Qualifiers to Include China and Brazil
Yuriy SheremetThe global eSports industry was worth over USD1 billion as estimated in 2019 and according to the latest projections, its worth by the year 2022 will double. Just last year, the eSports industry generated over USD947 million in gross revenues and its growth is not only fueled by the iconic video games that millions of fans play but also by the live streaming market and media rights.
In other words, there is a lot of money in the industry so there is no wonder why big professional eSports tournaments constantly expand to include more teams and deliver more exciting professional eSports matches. Introduced in 2012, Counter-Strike Global Offensive remains one of the most popular eSports games followed by:
- Fortnite
- League of Legends
- Dota 2
- PUBG (PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds)
- Rainbow Six Siege
- Apex Legends
- Fee Fire
- Rocket League
- Call of Duty Warzone
- Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War
The first title of the iconic Counter-Strike series was released two decades ago in 2000. Needless to say, this is one of the most played first-person shooter video games. In Counter-Strike terrorists and counter-terrorists battle against each other using all sorts of tactics including hostage-taking and bombing. Counter-Strike was developed by Turtle Rock Studios, Valve, Hidden Path Entertainment, Ritual Entertainment, Nexon, and Gearbox Software.
From Counter-Strike to CS:GO
The first game of the series was released as a mod for the Half-Life video game designed by Jess Cliffe and Minh Le. After the Counter-Strike mod’s rights and intellectual property were sold to Valve, Counter-Strike became a standalone retail video game. The Counter-Strike Condition Zero video game was released in 2004 by Turtle Rock Studios. Just eight months later, the Counter-Strike Source video game was released by Valve and this is a remake of the first Counter-Strike release.
The fourth Counter-Strike release CS:GO (Counter Strike Global Offensive) was released in 2012 for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, OS X, and Windows. Over the years, several spin-off releases appeared in Asia including Counter-Strike Nexon, Counter-Strike Neo, and Counter-Strike online, but Counter-Strike Global Offensive remains the most popular game in the series. Needless to say, all of the major Counter- Strike Global Offensive tournaments are heavily covered by renowned esports betting sites and if you are looking for the best CSGO betting sites, the info is available at greenwall.gg.
Almost one decade since Counter Strike Global Offensive was released, the game’s developer updates the game quite frequently with bigger additions and smaller expansion patches. Like in the original game, two teams compete against each other including counter-terrorists and terrorists. There are eight game modes and all of them can be played at Valve servers solely dedicated to the video game. Since 2012 when the game was released, it has attracted over eleven million gamers per month.
Besides having a loyal base of casual gamers, Counter-Strike Global Offensive is one of the biggest players on the thriving eSports scene of professional gamers who compete in various CSGO tournaments and leagues including several Major Championships or the Majors that are sponsored by Valve. The first Counter-Strike Global Offensive Major was held in 2013 in Sweden. DreamHack hosted the event while sixteen teams participated and split a great prize pool of US250,000. Since 2018, twenty-your teams compete.
BLAST Premier – CSGO Professional eSports League
Formerly known as BLAST Pro Series, BLAST Premier is one of the newer professional Counter Strike Global Offensive leagues. It was launched not so long ago in January of 2020. The BLAST Premier league has two sessions including the fall and spring season, and it primarily features professional CSGO teams from Europe and North America. Twelve regular teams compete for eight months as both seasons last for around four months.
The Group stage of the league ends with six top-performing teams competing in a season finale. In addition, in the season finals, two teams from showdown events from the fall and spring seasons can also compete even if they failed to reach the group stage during the regular events. The winner of every final participates in the Global Finals that occur once a year. The BLAST Premier Spring 2020 season was held from the 31st of January to the 16th of February at 3 Mills Studio in London and the best performing teams were Natus Vincere, FaZe, and G2 Esports.
The Spring 2020 season EU Showdown was held in June and ENCE and Vitality were the top two teams. FURIA and MiBR were the top two teams by the end of the Spring 2020 NA Showdown while complexity Gaming won the Spring 2020 EU Finals held in June as well. Evil Geniuses won the Spring 2020 NA Finals. October marked the beginning of the Fall 2020 regular season, and the top three performing teams were OG, G2 Esports, and Vitality.
The top two teams from the Fall 2020 Showdown were mousesports and FURIA while the team Vitality won the Fall 2020 Finals against Astralis. Natus Vincere was crowned the champion in the 2020 Grand Final held in January 2021 after defeating the team Astralis. On the 4th of February 2021, the Spring season’s group stage started. The Spring Showdown 2021 held in April saw Gambit Esports and G2 Esports claiming the first and second place and everything is ready for the Spring Finals 2021 that will start on the 15th of June and last until the 20th of June.
Fall Qualifiers Expansion to Include Brazil and China
As reported recently, one of the biggest CSGO professional leagues the BLAST Premier has expanded to include more teams from more countries. More specifically, its Fall Qualifying Series will include Brazil and China. This means that the Fall Qualifying Series that runs from July to September will now include:
- North America
- Middle East
- Nordics
- South America
- Eastern Europe
- Western Europe
- China
- Iberia
According to the latest report, sixty-four teams will compete across the eight events of the Fall Qualifying series. The participants will qualify depending on their performance in open qualifiers, their local leagues, and tournaments, or directly by invites. Every Fall Qualifying event will include eight teams with the RTP Arena Cup starting on the 9th of July.
As expected, winners of the Qualifier series held from July to September will have their place in the Fall Showdown that will be held on the 12th of October. As released, the Fall Showdown event will have a prize pool of £114,680. The event’s organizer will release more details about the upcoming Fall Qualifiers in the weeks to come. One thing is for sure, there will be no shortage of exciting, highly competitive CSGO matches this year.
Yuriy Sheremet – Expert in mobile gaming and esports among shooters and MOBA games.
At EGamersWorld, Yuriy, as in 2020 when he joined the portal, works with content, albeit with adjustments to his area of responsibility.