ESL and BLAST confirms commitment to CS after Valve announcment
The end of partnered leagues will not sway either of the tournament organizers away from Counter-Strike.
2025 will be a fresh new start to the tournament circuit in Counter-Strike. Today the scene is heavily dominated by two key players in ESL and BLAST, who are organizing almost all of the tier-1 tournaments currently. The two companies are using a partnership business model with several of the biggest teams today, where teams are paying big money to receive direct invitations to tournaments such as ESL Pro League, and BLAST Spring and Fall Groups.
This means that for non-partnered teams the route to qualifying for these events is long and brutal. A fact that ENCE's in-game leader Marco “Snappi” Pfeiffer has pointed out on several occasions.
Valve's announcement yesterday effectively killed off both ESL and BLAST's business models. The Senior Vice President for the ESL FACEIT Group, Ulrich Schulze commented on the changes in a tweet.
- We will shift our tournament revenue-sharing model from selected teams to all teams participating starting in 2025. We will announce more details on this in the coming months.
BLAST also commented on the news.
- BLAST Premier will remain an integral part of tier 1 CS in this new open ecosystem. We are excited as ever to continue to innovate the esports viewing experience and take our tournaments to all corners of the world.
The next tier-1 tournament this year is the ESL Pro League. You can see the 2023 schedule in the article below.