People Behind BLAST: Andrew Haworth

I've been at BLAST since September 2018, so coming up for seven years. We're unrecognizable from that first company. When I joined we were largely a team organisation and we had delivered one event in Copenhagen and promised that we would deliver many more. My first day was flying to Istanbul and then phoning Robbie (BLAST’s CEO) up going “there's a few things we need to fix here and I'm staying.” We’ve changed our scale of capacity massively. The fact we had a few months ago we had four tournaments on a weekend across four titles and my phone didn’t ring is testament to that scaling, we’ve had 272 days of live broadcast in the first half of this year compared to all of 2019 where I think we had 19 days of broadcast days.

I started in corporate banking out of university. I did three years of that and realised that wasn't for me. I then worked at Live Nation running festivals across the UK for seven years, the highlight of that was undeniably the 2012 London Olympics. I ran the live sites across Hyde Park, Victoria Park and Trafalgar Square during the games - that's still probably a massive career highlight as well as a pre-BLAST highlight. I freelanced for a number of years, lived in Azerbaijan for a while opening the national stadium, working on the European Games and the Islamic Solidarity Games. Toured with the Rolling Stones around the UK and Ireland before jumping into BLAST.

There's probably three functions to it:

Making sure that I've got a team that is keeping the trains on the tracks and they're running on time. So that's the sort of project management and programme management of each of BLAST’s ecosystems. We've got a fantastic team making sure we're building out real strategic relationships with our partners in each ecosystem, future proofing them and understanding how each ecosystem works and making sure that we're putting on a product that's super exciting for people.

Then I've got the events team under me that are responsible for making sure we've got the shows on, we've got the right venues in place and we've got the tournaments running. Thankfully the team that does that is incredible so I do very little of that. This is where my early career was so I try to stay clear of it knowing I’ve got enough understanding to jump in and support if needed.

And then I'm trying to look at what the future looks like. So where can we grow into - how can we build out into a competitive entertainment space? Looking at RFPs that are coming in and new business that we want to win, how we might onboard that and scale that. My role should always be looking 18 months ahead and how we can set the business up for success whether that's helping people grow or bringing in more people to be able to meet those challenges - and that's a lot of fun.

Yeah, I think I've probably been a good proxy of how BLAST has evolved over the years, with my first as the Director of Operations and Production I was just making sure we put those events on. Those first 18 months we delivered 10 tournaments across 6 countries and put out 25 days of live content. We came into that having never operated really outside of Denmark when I joined. That first 18 months was just “how on earth did we go from one show in Denmark to what was then 10 shows across six countries”. So that was very much a hands dirty getting involved in everything type role, making sure we were set up to operate and deliver those tournaments.

I came in knowing very little about esports and I've always been very honest about that. I fell in love with Counter Strike in those early years and really kind of knew that there was a gap in my knowledge. I kind of immersed myself in trying to get up to speed with esports, CS and the relationship with teams, which is kind of where the commissioner role naturally came from.

That was then a real change of role where you're into understanding what makes each team tick, why they want to be part of Premier rather than something else, what makes sense for them and hopefully building out successful relationships with them across the years.

These relationships have evolved now into the new ecosystem when we’re working with teams across multiple titles to ensure we’re setting teams and players up for success and ensuring we can tell their stories to put on compelling content.

Now I’m more involved in how we create, establish and grow our ecosystem. I’m a long way from the details of the tournament delivery, thankfully we’ve got an incredible team that put those together without me getting into the weeds - I'd probably get in the way if I tried to jump back in.

Obviously at the end of 2023 we had Valve changing the rules on commercial relationships between teams & TO’s which upended the whole business model we had for Premier. In hindsight that was really fun as we got to be creative and come up with new formats and operating models but at the time it was a real challenge and something that concerned us.

At the time it was slightly scary, but to be able to build that out, come up with new ways to incentivise teams, get the team's feedback, be able to be flexible a bit more with formats and try and create something that is very different and stands out from the crowd. My biggest fear in that period of time was that every tournament would end up looking the same, with every TO putting on events that have the same format, have a similar sorts of prize money and nothing really stands out or means anything if every tournament looks the same. We so desperately wanted to try and avoid that. I think we've done a good job of that so far. There are bits that we'll need to tweak and evolve over time, but I think that's been a really exciting opportunity.

Creating & launching Dota SLAM has been great fun, it's exciting when we can just come up with and create a series like that in the Valve landscape. We played around with a new format, that we’ve tweaked a little, worked out a commercial model and got to see if that works. That was really rewarding to do and really exciting to help lead the team through. We've got some really passionate, incredible people internally coming up with ideas and that constantly inspires & motivates me.

I do struggle picking a favourite, in some ways I would say the first Lisbon event we did in 2018 because we had a stage that was stuck in a strike in France, so we didn't actually know until 36 hours before the show if we'd have a stage - that was fun and the first time I felt the team come together on a challenge that gave me confidence we had something great building here. The audience was incredible in Lisbon and I was just starting to understand what this community was and what it had the potential to be.

I think there are others: Paris as the first CS Major will always stand out as the first time we've done a show like that and then the Austin Major obviously is the big show I've worked on closely lately that feels pretty momentous. It's pretty much always usually the last show you worked on is your favorite project.

I’m really excited about BLAST’s new competitive entertainment angle, but much of the excitement is about not knowing exactly what that is yet, but we've got a lot of ideas and active conversations. I love that we’ve got a clear direction but the flexibility and creativity to work out how we get that. In 2020 when we had ambitions of growing into multi-titles I think we didn't know where those would land and so half of that is the excitement of not quite knowing exactly what's going to come to fruition but where we're trying to get to.

So much to look forward to still in 2025. I’m looking forward to Lyon, two packed out shows there for the Fortnite Global Championship and the Rocket League World Championship. Returning to Singapore and our first Dota 2 arena show will be exciting, I’m looking forward to what Kuno and the team can pull off there.

Further expansion into Asia is a big milestone for BLAST as well, we’re taking Premier to Hong Kong which should have an incredible crowd and there’s more Asian shows to be announced...

To visit and hang around in, I love the slightly more intense locations like Sao Paulo or Istanbul, the energy in places like that is great. They’re some of the best places to put on events, sort of slightly chaotic, but I absolutely love them.

I lived in Baku for a while and loved it. I'd love to take BLAST there and show you around some of my old haunts. Austin has an incredible vibe as well - I could live there very happily.

The Paris Major Final, to have a home team win in front of a packed out arena is a pretty special experience and something that when you run a sporting event you don't get to control, so unique as well for an event of that magnitude. That will always be a pretty special moment just so that would definitely be up there from the BLAST side.

Outside of BLAST, I've been lucky enough to go to a couple of Olympics and Winter Olympics and those are always just something really special. My favorite event I've been to outside of BLAST would be the Rugby World Cup final in New Zealand in 2011. The All Blacks are one of the biggest names in sport so to see them win at home was incredible, I don't remember much of the night out after, but I made my flight the next day somehow.

To work on the London 2012 Olympics was incredible, the Olympics is the biggest party in the world and to be involved in creating and delivering the Live Sites so millions of people could engage with the Games in your home city will live with me for a long time.

The Six Invitational 2025 in Boston because that was the first time I’d seen an Six Invitational in person. The production was beautiful and thematically worked so well in a great venue. Plus I love Boston as a city and spent my honeymoon there

I try to spend as much time as possible with my girls and my wife, my daughters are 5 & 7 so it's a lot of fun with irrepressible energy. I enjoy running as often as I can, it’s a great way to clear my head and when travelling it's a great way to see a city. I’m a wonderfully failed sportsman so I watch as much sport as I can, mostly track & field, cricket or rugby. If I can balance out family time with a bit of exercise then that keeps me pretty happy.