BLAST Premier Fall Finals to be held with a live audience

By Fariha Bhatti

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Jun 14, 2021

Reading time: 2 min

BLAST has announced its first Counter-Strike: Global Offensive event in a live arena setting with fans in nearly 20 months. 

The tournament organizer has confirmed that the BLAST Fall Finals will take place in Copenhagen’s Royal Arena in November with a live audience in attendance. The initial stages in the first three days will take place off the stage, with the last three days set to take place in front of a limited audience. 

The event will run from November 23-28 at the venue known for hosting major CSGO events organized by BLAST. The 12,000 capacity venue in Denmark is ideal for loading up the CSGO audience, but the organizer will be limiting the seating for this event. According to the press release, 5,000 is the limit for BLAST Premier Fall Finals audience.

CSGO LAN events return with live fans in 2021

CSGO LAN events have been on pause since early 2020. While many esports tournaments have returned to normal, CSGO remains online after almost two years. Fans have been bugging tournament organizers to follow in the footsteps of other titles and bring CSGO back to the LAN setting with live fans in attendance. Tournament organizers have finally listened, and numerous offline events have lined up for later in the year. 

Following the changes in the ecosystem, PGL announced CSGO’s first LAN event to take place in Stockholm. BLAST Premier Fall Final will begin after PGL Major, which will be the first CSGO LAN event to happen in two years. Fans have tons of expectations from this event. BLAST VP of product and executive producer Nicolas Estrup said being the best isn’t the first priority. Rather, it’s player and audience health that still comes first. 

“From the start, we felt like it wasn’t needed for us to be the first. If anyone beats us to, great, if not, well then it is going to be exciting that we are the first ones. But safety first, health above everything,” Estrup said.

The tournament will pit eight teams against each other to fight for the prize pool of $425,000. The teams will compete for slots through the fall groups in September and two more teams securing places during October in the Fall Showdown.