Andrew Haworth: "2025 will be BLAST Premier's biggest year yet"

The Bounty is all about bringing something fresh and exciting to Counter-Strike in 2025. With the season set to be packed, we wanted a format that stands out and keeps fans on the edge of their seats. It’s a high-energy tournament designed to test rosters right out of the gate, with a dynamic prize pool and storylines we’ve never seen before in CS. Teams can wager their bounty, making every match high-stakes, and lower-ranked teams get to pick their opponents—turning the tables and adding a hunting element that’s going to be wild to watch. We’ve drawn inspiration from other esports, traditional sports, and even poker to create something completely new. We can’t wait to see how the community reacts!

At its essence, the Bounty is a 32-team single-elimination tournament, the final is a Bo5 and all other matches are Bo3. 28 teams come from the top of the Valve Global standings along with four wildcards that we choose. Here are the three elements that make it different:

We’ve announced two events in Europe for next year so far in addition to the Major in Austin and I’d expect the locations for the remaining events to be announced to provide opportunities to fans in some exciting locations. CS2 is a global game with an incredibly passionate fan base across the world, it’s a great privilege to be able to take events around the world and give fans access to the players they idolise. We place a focus on bringing epic CS action to new places while building lasting homes for events fans can count on. From previous events in Lisbon and London to Singapore and Abu Dhabi, we're all in on making 2025 our most global year yet. Counter-Strike is truly global and the esports ecosystem needs to reflect this.

We’re investing $17m into the ecosystem for teams and rosters across the next two years and that’s before you factor in logistical support around travel, accommodation, practice facilities and boot camps, which would take that figure well above €20m. The intention is that by providing a mixture of team payment mechanisms in a clear and transparent way teams and rosters are able to make informed decisions on what’s best for them. That could be a higher risk reward approach of big prize money events, the guaranteed participation fees that help teams financially plan and become more sustainable or the allocation from the frequent flyers program.
The frequent flyers program provides additional revenue opportunities for teams to earn significant sums of money across the year, it’s only fair that teams that hopefully help to develop BLAST Premier should be rewarded for that. It’s a pretty simple program really, the more events you play the more you earn and the better you do at those events then the more you earn. This benefits teams by providing clear information on how they can earn funds, which allows them to make informed decisions to help fund their business and continue to invest in this game we all love.
By backing these teams, we’re not just strengthening BLAST Premier events - we’re investing in the future of CS esports, building a sustainable ecosystem that attracts top talent and keeps the competitive spirit alive for years to come.

The Frequent Flyer program and all of the €17m direct investment into the ecosystem is available to all teams at all times. It’s a clear and transparent process that allows teams & rosters to navigate a path through the year that best fits their needs. The Frequent Flyer program is all about supporting the teams and ecosystem. With 2025 set to be one of the busiest years in CS, we want to ensure the best teams are competing at BLAST events while also providing meaningful investment to help them thrive. It’s about strengthening the scene, not circumventing it.

We’ve learnt a lot from that incident and changed our processes off the back of it to make the process clearer and improve integrity. Conceptually, 2025 is easier already in this area as it will be rosters rather than orgs that are invited to tournaments.
We introduced a new process for 2025 with the following key principles:

BLAST Risings provide a great opportunity for teams across the world to receive direct investment, to prove they’re the best team in their region, gain valuable ranking points over regional rivals and win the opportunity to play against the best teams in the world on a grand stage. Over $300,000 per year will be paid directly to regional teams as participation fees across the four Rising regions providing valuable investment.
Each region will have a round of completely Open Qualifiers that provide a route from the grassroots across the world to the top. Four teams from Open Qualifiers in each region will advance to the Closed Qualifiers and then a final eight-team event where they’ll take on the best teams in their region. The winner of each Rising will then take a place at the BLAST Premier Open, ensuring that BLAST Premier events will have team representation from all regions of the world.
We are incredibly delighted to be working with some wonderful regional partners to be delivering the BLAST Rising tournaments, such as Relog Media, Liga Ace, and GGTV.

First off some incredible CS, then some fantastic storylines from the teams creating Cinderella runs, great rivalries developing and teams getting under each other’s skins by wagering and taking the other's purse at the Bounty. From a BLAST Premier level, we want to put on great events that fans all over the world want to watch and attend. We’ve deliberately created different formats and narratives for each tournament with the intention of invigorating the scene across an incredibly busy 2025. I’m looking forward to seeing how the community responds to each tournament. We are hopeful that 2025 will be BLAST Premier’s biggest year yet - more matches, more teams, more arena events, and fresh storylines from around the globe.