BLAST Premier announced for 2020 with a $4.25M prize pool

BLAST Pro Series has announced a new tournament series for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, named BLAST Premier. It will be held in 2020 and features a total prize pool of $4.25 million. 

Split between two season finals and a global final, $500,000 will go to the winner of the former while $1,000,000 goes to the winner of the latter. The tournament is designed to give all teams the opportunity to qualify for any of the finals and the format used will be a best-of-three series. 

BLAST Pro Series CEO, Robbie Douek said in a release: “The next evolution of our tournament series is going to blow people away." He also added, "We will finish the year with a surge of excitement as we crown the 2019 BLAST Pro Series Champion. And we look forward to creating something incredible in esports with BLAST Premier in 2020.”

BLAST states that the new series is the result of all they've learnt since hosting their first event. Director of product and experience, Nicolas Estrup explained a bit more: “Developing our 2020 format and experience has been one of the most exciting tasks since I joined the company. We’ve taken onboard the incredible feedback from our show surveys and across the Counter-Strike community."

“It’s only been 12 months since we were in Istanbul, our second ever event, and here we are, almost a full trip around the world later and a lot wiser. The culmination of everything we’ve done so far is BLAST Premier – a competitive Best-of-3 format, where anyone can win the Global Final – enhanced by great storytelling and a fan focused experience,” he stated. 

BLAST's activities within the CS:GO space seems to keep expanding as it tries to rival ESL and their recently announced Pro Tour. The variety provides teams with numerous opportunities to compete and if BLAST is able to pull it off, even allow much smaller teams a chance to win the title.