BLAST Premier is the ultimate CS2 circuit having launched back in 2020. It effectively succeeded the BLAST Pro Series, and today, it’s widely considered to be the pinnacle of CS2 esports. In 2024, the BLAST Premier League will be split into two seasons, Spring and Fall, before culminating in an exhilarating World Final event. For CS2 bettors, BLAST Premier betting makes for some intense wagering.
There is a wide range of teams that come together to compete at the BLAST Premier tournament. At its core, the competition is backed by twelve ‘partner teams’ representing some of the world’s finest gaming organisations. However, a regionalised qualification framework means that some teams can come up from the lower tiers of CS2 esports. For CS2, no competition offers the sheer value that the BLAST Premier tournament does. In 2024, the total prize pool for the entire circuit totals around $2,500,000, with the World Final itself taking a huge $1,000,000 portion of that pot.
In 2024, teams from Asia, South and North America, Oceania, and all of Europe will be able to qualify. It makes for a fantastically diverse scene and heightens the excitement of BLAST Premier betting.
The Best BLAST Premier Betting Sites
BLAST Premier Events
In 2024, the BLAST Premier circuit is split up into three main stages – Spring, Fall, and the World Final. For the Spring and Fall seasons, the play will be separated into three sections – Groups, Showdown, and Final. Ultimately, the entire year-long circuit will culminate in the World Final, featuring eight of the world’s best CS2 teams.
BLAST Premier 2024 Schedule
BLAST Premier Groups
The Group stages serve as the opening portion of each season.
- For the Spring Season, the Group stage will take place from the 22-28th January.
- The Fall Season will take place from the July 26th to August 4th.
Groups are exclusively open to the CS2-partnered teams, and they offer some fantastic opportunities for early BLAST Premier betting.
All the action will kick off in the third week of January, with bettors eager to action their BLAST Premier Spring Groups predictions.
Each of the Group stages carries a hefty prize pool worth $177,500, and in total, they offer hours of high-octane combat for fans to enjoy. For 2024, organisers have promised and scheduled hours of hard-hitting CS2 action, which begins with the BLAST Premier Groups.
Spring and Fall Groups look to be hosted in BLAST’s studio in Denmark, without a live crowd.
For these stages, the play opens up with three double-elimination format groups. Then, the series advances into three intense, single-elimination gauntlets, with the last chance, single-elimination stage rounding off the event. Each winner from the gauntlet and the ‘last chance’ stages will push on into the BLAST Premier Final stage, while the gauntlet losers and the last chance losers transition into the Showdown stage.
The BLAST Premier 2024 Spring season begins with the Spring Groups. These are precious times for CS2 bettors because, coming into the year, speculation regarding the relative strengths of the teams is at its peak. New contracts are signed, and new faces are admitted and let go. Even the second division scene undergoes a big reconstruction, giving the real underdog bettors the chance to put their money and be rewarded by those on the rise.
As a result, bookies will be susceptible to overestimating favourites and underestimating underdogs, making the odds’ intrinsic value higher than what’s seen on the surface. You might not want to miss out on the chance to capitalise on these inaccuracies.
Following the Spring Groups, the Fall Groups follow with similar stakes, though less opportunity to earn BLAST Premier points and qualify for the World Final. Learn everything you need to know in our very own BLAST Premier Fall Groups betting guide.
BLAST Premier Showdown – Changes for 2024
For the 2024 season, the BLAST Premier Showdown is going back to its old format.
Instead of two split regional events, a singular 16 team tournament is taking place. This tournament involves a single elimination bracket, with the winners of two semi-finals obtaining a seeds for the Spring and Fall Finals.
Seeding for this Showdowns will be through BLAST Premier Qualifiers for teams across the entire world competing online.
Seven regional qualifiers for each Showdown means that any team on the global frontier can compete, making this a unique CS2 betting opportunity.
Image Credit: BLAST Premier
For bettors who follow the CS2 lower division scene, the Showdown events provide golden opportunities. As mentioned, the underdog teams enter the main stage here, facing the elites in the higher division with overblown multipliers. There’s a whole world of potential teams sitting there, just waiting for the opportunity to qualify. Although the best CS2 teams in the world are playing in the BLAST Premier circuit, they could be disrupted by an up-and-coming underdog.
BLAST Premier Finals
To cap off each season, the BLAST Premier Finals take place. These events will see eight teams fight it out, aiming to secure the lion’s share of the $425,000 prize pools on offer. Furthermore, the team that claims the top spot at each of the two BLAST Premier Finals will land an advantageous seeding in the World Final stage.
BLAST Premier organisers have already confirmed that in 2024, the BLAST Premier Final events will be played in a LAN setting with a crowd. This is undoubtedly one of the most exhilarating ways to watch CS2 tournaments, supporting your team live and in person.
When it comes to CS2 betting, the BLAST Premier Finals make up some of the hottest events of the year. They’re backed by almost every esports betting site out there, and the markets will be diverse, dynamic, and readily available.
Since the BLAST Premier Seasonal Finals take place at the end of their respective seasons and right after the Majors, you can easily deduce (with higher-than-usual accuracy) the favourite teams. Taking the 2022 Spring and Final winners NAVI and Heroic, for example, you can see why this is the case.
NAVI finished 2nd in the 2022 Antwerp Major in May, about a month before they were hailed as victors of the Spring Finals in June. The same pattern could be seen with Heroic, who also finished 2nd in the 2022 Rio Major in November, exactly two weeks before claiming the Fall Finals. This was also true in 2021 when NAVI finished 2nd in the Spring Finals only to win the BLAST Premier 2021 World Final later that year.
So far, the proximity between the Major and the Seasonal Finals has given bettors a reliable reading that they could use as a reference for gauging how a particular team would perform in the short term. Perhaps it’s something you should consider as well.
BLAST Premier World Final
The BLAST Premier 2024 World Final will wrap up not only the BLAST circuit for the year. This will happen in November when a winning team is scheduled to lift the World Final trophy.
Participated by 8 of the most proficient CS2 teams in 2024 with a $1,000,000 prize pool on the line, it’s the ultimate crossroad where the following seeds will compete:
- Race to the World Final Leaderboard – 3 teams
- BLAST Premier Spring Final – 1 team
- BLAST Premier Fall Final – 1 team
- Copenhagen Major – 1 team
- IEM Katowice – 1 team
- Cologne – 1 team
Since the World Final will occur at the year, it’s an event where most variable changes brought mainly by roster shuffles and meta adaptations will have already been discounted in the odds, which means that this is a tournament where bookies will be the most confident with their payouts.
Image Credit: BLAST Premier
That said, there are still great Premier betting opportunities that await. In the BLAST Premier 2022 World Final, for instance, finalists Team Liquid and G2 both came from the World Leaderboard and were considered to be underdogs. Outright odds for these teams rose as high as 10.00 and 11.00, respectively, before the group stage. Meanwhile, Rio Major finalists Outsiders and Heroic, the absolute shoo-ins, didn’t even make it to the playoffs. NAVI, another favourite, bowed out early in the quarterfinals.
OG was also assigned a whopping 51.00 multiplier, which kept some faithful bettors at the edge of their seats until OG got dropped (1-2) in the semifinals. G2 would eventually win, rewarding outright believers with the second-highest multiplier in the tournament.
The point? Whether it’s January or December, nobody really knows how major events like this will pan out. It’s best not to let the fun out of your BLAST Premier bets get drained by flimsy expectations.
BLAST Premier betting markets
If you’re getting involved with BLAST Premier betting, you’re making a solid and potentially lucrative decision. There are few tournaments as widely covered as the BLAST Premier, which brings untold opportunities to make money with a few esports wagers.
There’s a vast number of esports betting sites out there, and some of them take great pride in covering the BLAST Premier markets. They’ll offer exclusive bonuses, special promotions, and boosted odds, and some will even re-brand their platforms to celebrate the BLAST Premier Finals and World Final events.
Let’s break down some of the most common and popular markets for BLAST Premier betting markets:
| Outright Winners | Few markets are easier to understand than the outright winners. Unfortunately, where esports are concerned, these markets rarely play fair. At any given moment, the tide of battle can be turned on its head, and an underdog can produce a massive upset. However, if you're able to understand the game itself and have a little knowledge regarding the teams and players, this is a relatively safe market to play. For instance, if you're playing favourites to make small, incremental profits, the outright winner markets are the ones for you. |
| Correct Score | While the correct score markets require deeper industry knowledge, they also carry with them much better odds. With these, you're not just picking who will win, but you're guessing what the score will be at the end of the match. Will Natus Vincere win 3 - 0 over Ninjas in Pyjamas? Will Astralis and FaZe take it to a 2 -3 series? If you think you have the knowledge and know-how to accurately play these markets, then you can stand to make a fine profit betting on the BLAST Premier events. |
| Map Totals | If you're betting on how many maps will be played, you'd better have advanced knowledge of each team in the competition. With this market, you stand to make a tidy profit, provided you can accurately predict which teams can deliver and which can fall short. For instance, if you know there's an equal, intense matching between two sides, place a map total bet in favour of a full-length series. If you think the fixture will push out to five maps, and you're right, you stand to make a nice return. This is a relatively safe market, but it carries with it the requirement of intense knowledge. Ultimately, you need to remember to have fun while betting on the BLAST Premier events. If you're betting with a reputable platform, like GG.bet, you can take advantage of the many offers and bonuses they offer. But, if you find yourself slipping and the losses are mounting up, take some time to step back, re-evaluate your strategy, and start again with small, incremental bets. |
BLAST Premier 2025 – New Horizons
With Valve announcing a desire to restructure the scene for ‘a level playing field’, BLAST quickly announced that changes would soon hit this premier structure.
As of June 2024, BLAST has revealed the 2025 schedule with the following tournaments to look forward to:
Changing from 2024, the tournament series now features three levels of competition:
- BLAST Bounty: 32 teams compete to raise bounty to take larger percentage of the prize pool
- BLAST Open: big arena tournaments, 16 teams from all CS regions compete under one roof
- BLAST Rivals: only the best 8 teams compete to see who the best team in the world is
In addition, for 2025, another BLAST.tv Major is bringing the action to Austin, Texas, USA. This looks to follow up on the 2023 iteration of the tournament. We’ll dive deeper into the format as we near 2025.
