Where to Watch the BLAST Premier Spring Showdown 2024

BLAST is back with their second Counter-Strike (CS2) tournament of the year. The 2024 edition of the BLAST Premier Spring Showdown will be held from March 6 to 10. The tournament features six sides that have come through qualifying pathways held for Asia, North America, South America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and the winner from the RTP Arena Cup held last month. These teams will line up alongside ten long-term partners of BLAST.

Sixteen teams will battle through a single elimination system and a best-of-three bracket. The winner and the runners-up will secure an entry into the Blast Premier Spring Final later in the year in London in June. A prize money of USD 135,000 is on the line, which is a significant jump from the USD 67,500 that was on offer last year.

The tournament will consist of only one stage that comprises two straightforward single-elimination brackets. Each bracket consists of eight teams, with all games in a best-of-three format.  The winner of each group qualifies for the BLAST Premier Spring Final, thereby joining the six teams that have already made it through to the BLAST Premier Spring Groups 2024.

The Showdown features a rolling schedule with three best-of-three matches played each day. Heroic, winners of last year’s edition, take on Ninjas in Pyjamas in the second Round of 16 match, following Cloud9’s clash against Rare Atoms. Falcons vs Metizport will round off the action on the opening day of the competition. In a surprise exit, last year’s runners-up, Vitality, won’t be seen in action this time.

Liquid’s face-off against SAW, major attendees, will be the marquee contest on the second day. Another compelling fixture between Complexity and OG will follow that. The crunched nature of the competition adds an exciting layer of competitiveness to an already robust competition that promises to be more closely contested than ever.

Adding non-partner teams, who have made it this far through the qualifying route, adds an intriguing subplot to the competition. If they can potentially secure a place in the main spring event by dethroning some of the stronger teams, it’ll massively raise the profile of an already burgeoning and robust competition.

On the player front, it’ll be intriguing to watch S1mple and Donk in action.

S1mple, renowned as one of the best Counter-Strike players, returns to the servers after a five-month hiatus, having last featured in the ESL Pro League in October. The Ukrainian star came out of a self-imposed hiatus by signing with the Falcons on a one-month loan from NAVI, the team whose roster he has been on since 2016. This has ensured the Saudi Arabia-based organization are able to field a full roster at the Showdown.

While the move is only temporary, it’s an opportunity for s1mple to test the waters elsewhere, something he’d alluded to while taking a break from competitive e-sports last October. Falcons have shown keenness to sign him, but it isn’t a done deal yet regarding him coming on board full-time. However, this is certain: Falcons are among the few teams that can afford his salary and break the bank to secure his services, especially with the Saudi government heavily promoting e-sports as part of its sports washing plans.

S1mple replaces BOROS, who has been benched after the team failed to qualify for the Copenhagen Major late last month. In another rejig, assistant coach Rafael "Feldman" Rodriguez has also been released.

Donk, Russia’s rising star who recently won IEM Katowice 2024 with Team Spirit, will play his first BLAST Premier event. The 17-year-old made a significant impact on Team Spirit as they dominated the CS2 grand finale despite having a young team. Particularly impressive was their manner of taking down Faze Clan, a team comprising veterans who were billed as the overwhelming favorites.

The victory was all the more remarkable because Team Spirit beat the No. 1 ranked side despite being ranked No. 19. Equally significant was the fact that this was Donk’s first tier-1 competition, where he displayed impeccable skills and strategy that also earned him the ESL Pro Tour DHL MVP, no small accolade for someone just not out of his teens.

If the BLAST Premier: Spring Groups 2024 is anything to go by, expect viewership records to be shattered for this one. The Spring Groups 2024 hit a peak viewership of 328.7k during the group stages, especially when G2 Esports and NAVI – behemoths of the e-sports world – squared off.

Amazingly, even their fixture four days prior to this was the second-most popular at the competition. In all, a total of 12.1 million hours were clocked, with an average viewership of 169.7k for the games, including a combined airtime of over 70 hours.

Critics will argue these numbers are less than 2023, but contextualizing is important. There was an increase in the number of matches overall, which meant several fans tuned in specifically to watch their respective teams in action while merely having a cursory glance at the others, unlike earlier, where engagement in every game would see massive spikes.

Perhaps the absence of Brazilian teams – who contribute wholesomely to Counter-Strike’s success on digital – may have played a hand. That said, there were encouraging signs from Portugal and Ukraine, regions where the viewership rose by 66%. The massive spike in interest has meant new languages have been added to the broadcast. In addition to English, Kazakh was added to the live broadcast last year by Paragon Events.

Viewer stats for Spring Groups 2024 in January saw a massive spike, and close to 300k concurrency, for the clash between Natus Vincere and G2 Esports, while the Russian Derby between Virtus.pro and Cloud9 was only slightly less attended. Overall, the digital viewership has been on the rise and comes as a shot in the arm for BLAST heading into the mid-summer tournaments.