Cover Image Courtesy: BLAST Premier | Thumbnail Image Courtesy: BLAST Premier
After ESL, DreamHack, and FLASHPOINT, even BLAST has decided to go online with its Spring 2020 Finals and Showdown tournaments due to the ongoing novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Through a Tweet made by the tournament organizers, they stated that
“For the safety of our teams, fans and crew and to ensure the world-class BLAST experience remains the Premier experience in esports, the Spring Showdown and Spring Final events will be played online.”
The organizers further mentioned that due to “the strain of demanding timezones, we will have two BLAST Premier Spring Showdown and Spring Final groups split by the region,” as the participating teams will be divided in between two regions, the Americas and Europe.
BLAST Premier: Spring 2020 Showdown
Apart from the 6 teams making their way into the Showdown via the Regular Season, 14 more teams will be invited for this tournament which is scheduled to take place from 31st May - 7th June, featuring a $325,000 prize pool.
These 20 teams will be equally divided inbetween the two regions,
Both the regions will further witness the 10 teams being split into 2 groups of 5 teams each.
BLAST Premier: Spring 2020 Finals
Apart from the 6 teams making their way into the Finals via the Regular Season, 6 more teams from the showdown will be joining them for the tournament. These eight teams will be divided inbetween the 2 regions as follows,
The tournament which is scheduled to take place from 15th - 21st June, featuring a $750,000 prize pool will witness top two teams from the European region and the winner from the Americas region, qualify for the BLAST Premier: Global Finals 2020.
With more than a month left for the tournament to begin, BLAST has already taken the logical decision of shifting their LAN events into an online tournament, considering both the safety of their staff and players while keeping in mind the difficulty associated with playing on regional online servers, smartly splitting the whole league into the two regions.
Other online tournaments like ESL Pro League Season 11 seem to be operating quite smoothly, let’s see if BLAST is able to replicate the same or even take it up a notch with their already appreciated content pieces.