Southern Nevada’s public tourism board votes on Tuesday on a sponsorship that could put BLAST’s third Counter-Strike Major in Las Vegas, with a second BLAST event to follow in summer 2028.
$2 million is the price Las Vegas is prepared to pay for two BLAST events in 2028. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA), the region’s public tourism agency, has a sponsorship agreement with BLAST ApS as item one on the agenda for its board meeting on , as first reported by The Esports Radar. The item is listed “for possible action”.
The agenda book sums up the proposal in one sentence:
That the Board of Directors considers authorizing the Chief Executive Officer (CEO)/President to execute a Sponsorship Agreement with BLAST ApS, in the amount of $2,000,000, to host the following events in Las Vegas in 2028: 1) the Counter-Strike Major E-Sports Competition and 2) a Summer BLAST E-Sports Competition.
Thanksgiving weekend and 130,000 room nights
The Major “is scheduled to take place in Las Vegas in 2028, during the weekend between Thanksgiving and National Finals Rodeo, filling a key need period for the destination”, chief sports officer Janis Burke writes in the staff memo. HLTV reports a tentative window of 20 November to 10 December 2028, which would make it the second Major of that year. The summer event would be held at the Las Vegas Convention Center, and the agenda does not say which game.
In return, the LVCVA would get “host city designation and rights for both premier BLAST tournaments”, digital, broadcast and destination marketing assets, and “hospitality and ticket allocations”. The two events are estimated to generate 130,000 hotel room nights; the $2 million sits in the 2028 budget.
The memo’s only benchmark is Austin. The most recent Major in the United States “sold more than 45,000 tickets with 80% of ticketholders traveling to the event from out of state”, it says. BLAST itself claims the BLAST.tv Austin Major 2025 generated $102 million in economic impact for the city, based on a study it commissioned from Angelou Economics. That study counted more than 40,000 attendees, 65% of them from outside Texas, so the Las Vegas memo’s figures are higher than BLAST’s own.
Valve has announced nothing for 2028
Valve took bids for the 2027 and 2028 Majors in early 2025, and the 2027 hosts are public: FiReSPORTS run the first in Buenos Aires, Perfect World the second in Shanghai from 22 November to 12 December 2027. PGL, without a Major that year, have set a Schengen event for September 2027 instead.
For 2028 there is no official word. HLTV’s Milan “Striker” Švejda wrote in February that ESL and BLAST hold the two 2028 Majors, with BLAST rumoured to take its Major back to the United States and ESL weighing Brazil or Australia, as we reported in September. The agenda is the first public document to name a city, but it is a sponsorship proposal, not a Major announcement. Neither Valve nor BLAST has announced a 2028 Major.
A Las Vegas Major would be BLAST’s third after Paris 2023, the last CS:GO Major, and Austin 2025, both won by Vitality. It would also be the fifth Major on US soil after Columbus 2016, Atlanta 2017, Boston 2018 and Austin.
Las Vegas and Counter-Strike so far
Las Vegas has hosted top-level Counter-Strike once. DreamHack Masters Las Vegas in February 2017 was a $450,000 event with its playoffs at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, won by Virtus.pro over SK Gaming.
BLAST’s US arena events so far are the BLAST Pro Series stops in Miami and Los Angeles in 2019, the Austin Major and the $1 million BLAST Rivals at Dickies Arena in Fort Worth in May 2026.
The next Major is the PGL Major Singapore 2026, which starts on 24 November. All announced events up to 2027 are in our tournament calendar.
