BLAST Premier Spring Final Preview: FaZe in the Spotlight, NAVI Favored for Victory

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Counter-Strike action featuring 8 of the world’s top teams returns on June 12 with the BLAST Premier: Spring Final 2024. The BLAST Premier events are some of Counter-Strike’s top events, featuring many of the world’s top teams and the Spring Final 2024 edition will have $425K up for grabs. The winner of the event will not only take home $200K from the prize pool, but also directly qualify for the BLAST Premier: World Final 2024, which will take place later this year.

In collaboration with betting brand GG.BET, widely known for its support of esports, we at Esports Charts can present some joint-statistics covering the most popular teams, fan-favourites, and viewership predictions for the upcoming BLAST Premier Spring 2024 Finals. 

We would like to give a shoutout to DATA.BET, the premium esports betting solution provider, for their assistance in collecting pre-tournament betting statistics.

BLAST Premier: Spring Final 2024 Participants

The event will feature 8 participating teams, with 7 of these being currently ranked inside the global top 10. Team Vitality and FaZe Clan are the top-ranked teams attending the event, who finished the Spring Groups in tied first place alongside NAVI and Virtus.pro. NAVI are adjusting well to their post-s1mple life, and are the current reigning Major champions of Counter-Strike. 

Astralis, G2 Esports, and Team Spirit are also attending the event, with the latter team scraping their way into the event through the Spring Showdown qualifier. SAW also qualified through the Spring Showdown alongside Team Spirit; the Portuguese team is the only team ranked outside of the top 10 in attendance of the event and have nothing to lose. 

Counter-Strike’s esports scene was changed up by the release of Counter-Strike 2, and since the new game’s first Major event, the competitive scene of the game has been quite volatile. NAVI claimed another Major victory and crowned themselves as the first champions of Counter-Strike 2, but they have struggled in events since. FaZe Clan, Team Vitality, and G2 Esports have all had their fair share of strong performances at events, and Team Spirit shocked the community with their dominant win at IEM Katowice 2024. With so many different teams competing to become the best in the world, Counter-Strike is as exciting as it has ever been.

Although the most competitive team in the world is still undecided, FaZe Clan are by far the community’s favourite. The roster was mentioned by 99.6K individual Chatters, far outperforming NAVI, who were previously the esports title’s favourite team. Since losing s1mple, NAVI have experienced a noticeable downturn in their overall popularity. 

SAW was mentioned by more Chatters than both Astralis and Virtus.pro. Despite the Portuguese team being arguably less competitive than these other two rosters, the Portuguese Counter-Strike community is out in full force to support their compatriot roster. However, popularity does not always equal confidence. Not only did we analyse the popularity of each team, but we also collected data on which teams are the most bet-on to win the entire event. 

Despite NAVI no longer boasting the best player in the world, and despite NAVI not being the most popular team among fans, they are still the favourites to win the event. Fans clearly have faith in this new NAVI roster, especially after they clinched their first Counter-Strike 2 Major championship. 

Both FaZe Clan and Team Spirit followed closely behind NAVI. These two rosters faced off against each other at IEM Katowice 2024, where donk carried his team to victory with his brutal opening picks, but things may be different at the BLAST Premier: Spring Finals. Donk’s performance has cooled off in recent games, as teams are finding more confidence playing against him, and he may not be able to pull off the same star performance at this event as he did in Katowice. 

Team Vitality and G2 Esports are less-than-favoured to win the entire event, but their chances are not slim. Both teams have enjoyed competitive results at international tournaments since the last Major event, and they will be looking to solidify their strength through a strong result at the Spring Finals. G2 Esports in particular was facing a tough event as one of their star players, m0nesy was about to miss the event due to visa issues. However, the player announced yesterday on Telegram, a day before the event begins, that he has had his visa approved and will travel to the event.

Looking back towards the past viewership of previous BLAST Premier: Spring Finals events we can make a rough estimation of the viewership for the upcoming 2024 edition. Although the grand finals are usually the most popular match of an esports event, this was not always true for previous Spring Finals. In both 2021 and 2023 the most popular match of the event was not the grand final, but rather the clash of two of the community’s favourite teams.

As a rough estimation, peak viewership for the upcoming 2024 Spring Finals will fall between 306K and 374K concurrent viewers, but this depends on the matches at the event. FaZe Clan and Natus Vincere have both been placed into Group A at the event, and their group stage match could be highly popular among fans. G2 Esports is also located in Group B, and if they play a playoffs match against FaZe Clan, this could be the key to maximising viewership for the event.

The BLAST Premier events in Counter-Strike are some of the most prestigious third-party tournaments hosted within the esports discipline. The upcoming BLAST Premier Spring 2024 Finals will unlikely be as popular as the Spring 2022 Finals which received 762.9K PV, but chances are still high for strong viewership and for it to become one of the most-watched events of 2024 so far.