“We got humbled”: Astralis Sports Director on missing four consecutive Majors
In an interview with Pley.gg, Kasper Straube reflects on Astralis' struggles to qualify for Majors in recent years and their performance in 2024.
For years, Astralis was the team everyone in Counter-Strike fought tirelessly to dethrone—a Danish powerhouse that dominated the scene and claimed the game's most prestigious trophies tournament after tournament.
But now, those glory days exist only as a distant memory.
The harsh reality facing Astralis today is that they have failed to qualify for a Major in four consecutive attempts, with their last note-worthy title dating back to 2020.
“You can’t qualify without putting up a great effort”
We sat down with Astralis’ Sports Director, Kasper Straube, to gain insight into the team's struggles and the organization’s challenges over the past year.
The conversation began with Straube reflecting on the impact of Astralis failing to qualify for a Major in over two and a half years.
- We got humbled in the process, Straube admits to Pley.gg.
- Everyone knows that a Major is not something you can take for granted. You can't qualify without putting up a great effort - and despite a great effort, you might not be guaranteed a spot anyhow. I think we have been doing everything necessary to reach our goals, but without actually achieving them. For this specific Major, I think everything would have been different with dev1ce on the roster.
- I would say that we have managed quite well to still think about ourselves as a team that should compete at Majors, despite us not doing it for quite a while now. That’s been super important for the team’s understanding of itself. Also bringing in such great players is something that has helped maintain this perception.
Missing out on sticker money
It’s a known fact that making it to the Majors can be extremely fruitful financially for organizations and players. Allegedly, the sticker earnings from BLAST.tv Paris Major last year exceeded $110 million, which was handed out to the 24 attending teams.
An aspect that Kasper Straube also touches on:
- Everyone knows that there is a lot of money involved in qualifying for a Major and getting the stickers. So it has obviously had financial consequences for the organizations missing out. That’s something we in Astralis have been dealing with of course. It's especially tough for organizations that invest a lot to acquire high quality and then miss out because teams like us do consider Major qualifications as part of our budget.
- But Astralis is not just built around playing Majors. We don’t base everything on making the Majors, but it’s obviously part of our budget.
Question: Has it put any restrictions or meant that there are things you and the sporting sector can’t do?
- I wouldn’t say that. We are in a relatively good situation because we believe that we have five of the best Danish players on the scene at our disposal already. If you were in a situation where you wanted to make one or two changes then I would imagine that it would be influenced by this. But we’ve already seen Astralis investing heavily into this current roster. And now we are doing everything we can to get the results that are required when you make those kinds of investments.
cadiaN is the new chief in Astralis, after taking over the IGL helms from dev1ce (Photo credit: Stephanie Lindgren and BLAST)
It’s four years since Astralis last won a LAN title. In the meantime, there’s been a myriad of different lineups and changes. So can you understand if Astralis and CS fans in general can have trouble believing in this big Astralis comeback?
- Yes and no. I can only speak for the time I’ve been here. And looking at the team that I inherited compared to the team we have today, it’s pretty clear that we have significantly better players. But it’s also a time, where we have seen a lot of changes in the industry with CS2 coming out, large changes to the map pool and the 1,5-2 tier teams closing the gap to the top teams. So if people dream about an Astralis team winning three Majors in a row again, they are naive. That's not going to happen again.
- I would say the biggest struggle for Astralis has been finding the right five-man roster. We have that now.
In this process of building this team and just the results in general, do you think you have done a good enough job?
- I mean if you look at the result standpoint then no. Because we haven’t qualified for a Major while I’ve been here. However, if you look at Astralis when I came here and what it is today, I think Astralis is way more attractive. Before Astralis suffered from not being able to attract the best Danish players. That’s something we have changed. People can see that we are working differently from what Astralis did in the years after their great success, in terms of culture and how to run a team. We have gone from being not so interesting to super interesting to the players that we want to attract.
