A New System of Tournaments from BLAST

With Valve banning franchise leagues in 2025, all major tournament operators who signed partnership agreements with teams will be forced to review their tournament system. BLAST was the first to announce its revolutionary ideas, and it looks extremely innovative and interesting. 

It seems that the tournament operator has managed to comply with Valve’s terms and, at the same time, invented a system that will allow them to get the maximum loyalty of the teams, which was previously only possible through partnership agreements.

Additionally, the system will be interesting for the bettors, especially those using GG BET for betting. This platform offers the highest betting odds and the most current statistics for making the best predictions. 

The Diversity of Tournaments

With the new tournament system, BLAST demonstrated great diversity. During the year, the company will hold six tournaments divided into two seasons.

In each season, there will be one Bounty tournament – a democratic tournament for the maximum number of teams from the top world rankings. The other one is an Open tournament, which anyone can enter due to qualifications. In the Rivals tournament, only the elite will play.

Bounty

Bounty is a tournament for 32 teams, 30 of which are ranked by Valve, and two will be invited by the Blast directly (in such a way, that they are going to attract the attention of the media).

The entire prize pool will be distributed among the teams based on their results. After a loss, the team will keep a certain guaranteed amount for themselves, and the other part of its value will go to the team that won the tournament.

Thus, approaching the final, the remaining teams will accumulate an increasing share of the prize fund.

Open

Open tournaments will be held in large arenas and designed for 16 teams. Twelve teams will be invited based on Valve’s ranking, and another four will be determined by regional qualifiers, so these will be the most interesting events for the majority of players. In 2025, the tournaments will be held in London and Lisbon.

Rivals

The Rivals tournaments will be elite and will feature the top 8 teams in the world according to Valve’s rating. It will be impossible to get to them through invitations or qualifications.

Echoes of the Franchise System

Previously, BLAST partners not only received money but also provided media coverage. In the new system, BLAST tries to create a motivation system that would work even without partnership agreements for all participants.

BLAST will reward all participants in its tournaments with guaranteed amounts of money, with a total of $4 million for 2025, which is $1.5 million more than the total prize pool for the same period.

In addition, teams that play BLAST regularly will receive additional money. Teams will receive so-called tokens for their performance in tournaments, which can be earned for good performances. At the end of the year, depending on the number of tokens, the teams will share another 2 million dollars.

The total BLAST prizes in 2025 will amount to 8.5 million dollars, of which only 2.5 million will be drawn as prizes, and another 6 million will be received by teams simply for going to tournaments and completing Blast media tasks.

The main conclusion is that Valve’s rating becomes crucial for getting into big tournaments. Only two of the six BLAST tournaments in 2025 will have open qualifiers, and only 8 teams per year will be able to qualify for them other than Valve’s ranking.

At the same time, BLAST tournaments will have a huge impact on ranking. Hence, for the majority of players, the changes will not be significant.

It may also seem that Valve’s new system will not help young teams show themselves better than was possible during the franchise reign. But Valve has achieved the main thing: they have taken control of the entire eSports Counter-Strike thanks to the dominant influence of their own rating.

It is easy to predict that in 2025, ESL will also focus on Valve’s rating because it is probably an absolute requirement of the game developer.

Smaller tournament operators will follow the example of BLAST and ESL, so the HLTV rating, which has remained dominant for decades, will completely lose its meaning from 2025 and affect absolutely nothing.