Could the BLAST.tv Austin Major 2025 become the most popular esports event in U.S. history?

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After what feels like an eternity (seven years, to be exact), the Counter-Strike Major is finally returning to the United States. In just a couple of weeks, the world’s top teams will converge in Austin, Texas, for a showdown that has all the makings of a record-breaking event. With the right conditions, it could become the most popular CS tournament ever held in the country.

Ahead of the action, the Esports Charts team took a look back at previous Majors hosted in the U.S. and analyzed the viewership of major esports events in general across the country. Spoiler alert: even under the most favorable circumstances, the BLAST.tv Austin Major 2025 is highly unlikely to claim the top spot overall.

The United States, without a doubt, is one of the birthplaces and key engines of the global esports industry. It’s not just one of the leading producers of esports content, it’s also a massive consumer. Many of the technological and business innovations shaping the industry today have roots in the U.S. Naturally, over the past two decades, the country has hosted some of the biggest tournaments across a wide range of games, from regionally popular titles like Call of Duty and Halo to global powerhouses such as League of Legends, Dota 2… and of course, Counter-Strike.

Despite the United States’ undeniable influence in the esports world, it’s fascinating to note that most of the country’s all-time most-watched tournaments actually took place quite a while ago, back in the 2010s.

With the exception of Worlds 2022, a standout event where Riot Games leaned heavily into co-streaming for the first time, helping it reach a jaw-dropping peak of over 5.1 million concurrent viewers, three of the top five tournaments were held between 2016 and 2019. Fortnite, which hosted two of those events during the height of its popularity, dominated the scene at the time. As for Worlds 2016, its 1.5 million Peak Viewers now seems modest compared to the numbers the series consistently posts today.

Considering the most popular CS tournament ever only reached slightly above 2.1 million Peak Viewers, the upcoming Austin Major is unlikely to challenge for the overall top spot, even in a best-case scenario. After all, Counter-Strike still trails League of Legends in total global viewership, at least for now. But could the event become the top CS tournament ever held on U.S. soil? The short answer: yes. Very likely.

It’s strange to think, but the leadership in terms of Counter-Strike tournaments in the U.S. is still held by the now-defunct tournament organizer ELEAGUE, with its 2017 and 2018 Majors, which had almost identical viewership, differing by just a few thousand viewers. The 2017 event stands as the most-watched, featuring an insanely tense grand final between two titans of the era: Virtus.pro (still with its legendary Polish lineup, including players like Jarosław "pashaBiceps" Jarząbkowski and Wiktor "TaZ" Wojtas) and Astralis, the future undisputed best Major team and four-time champions of the series, who at that event finally broke their semifinal curse.

No other CS tournament held in the U.S. has managed to cross even the 1 million viewer mark, with last year’s IEM Dallas coming the closest. Notably, the events in fourth and fifth place (BLAST Premier and DreamHack Masters Las Vegas) didn’t even reach 500,000 concurrent viewers. Even in a worst-case scenario, it’s hard to imagine that the Austin Major won’t easily surpass those numbers.

Given the growing influence of co-streamers in CS tournaments, Austin Major is almost guaranteed to finish in the top 3, and with the right circumstances, it might even top the chart. As for what kind of numbers we’re expecting from the event, we’ll cover that in our next piece!

BLAST.tv Austin Major 2025 is the first CS Major of the calendar year. It’s also the first in the series to expand the number of participating teams from 24 to 32. The tournament will take place from June 3 to 22, with a prize pool of $1.25 million. You can follow its progress here, and in this article, we explained why the qualifiers for this event performed significantly worse than past events in terms of stats.