The rise and fall of FLASHPOINT — how the ambitious CS:GO league could not withstand the coronavirus and Valorant

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Update: Esports Charts apologizes for the unintentional mistake in the initial text. In fact Thorin himself announced plans to not renew the contract with Flashpoint / B Site. This piece of text has been corrected.

2020 was the most difficult year for the CS:GO esports scene: due to the coronavirus, all LAN tournaments were canceled, and many professional players decided to change the discipline and restart their careers in just-released Valorant. Despite the big changes, the same year also marked the beginning of an interesting rivalry between ESL Pro League, BLAST Series and FLASHPOINT. In the Esports Charts feature you will find out how the esports league from FACEIT and B Site Inc. tried to follow the ESL's ideas and why it didn't work out.

On the way to the franchise

To begin with, many CS:GO fans have been talking about the discipline's transition to franchising for a long time. Such a format is very convenient for the organizers, as it makes it easier for them to negotiate with investors and control relations with the clubs. The members of such leagues also gain benefits as they get additional income from advertising and media rights sales, as well as a stable tournament schedule and the opportunity to safely conclude long-term contracts with players and sponsors.

In 2020, discussions about the franchise format (and its versions) in CS:GO finally took shape into something substantial. Tournament operator ESL was the first to sign exclusive contracts with top clubs on special terms. The contract obliged the teams to play in all of ESL's leagues and tournaments, assist with the promotion and help to develop the ESL brand. In return, they received extra cash (apart from the prize money) depending on their media figures and other benefits. The first 13 clubs to sign contracts with ESL were Evil Geniuses, Team Liquid, 100 Thieves, Astralis, Complexity Gaming, ENCE, FaZe Clan, Team Vitality, Fnatic, MOUZ, Natus Vincere, G2 Esports and Ninjas in Pyjamas.

About the same time, tournament operator B Site Inc. and the FACEIT platform introduced their own franchise league called FLASHPOINT. The organizers announced a huge (at that time) prize pool of $2 million for two seasons and also signed exclusive contracts with clubs — mostly those without permanent tournament memberships in ESL: Cloud9, c0ntact Gaming, Dignitas, Team EnVy, Gen.G Esports, MAD Lions, MIBR and FunPlus Phoenix. As one can see from the lineup, the FLASHPOINT organizers focused on the American CS:GO scene.

Speaking of BLAST, this tournament series partly decided to go along the path of maneuvering between the two franchise leagues. The company held tournaments when it could and with whoever was available. For the most part, the organizers gave teams direct invitations, and some slots were distributed between wnners of qualifiers from partner tournaments. BLAST also introduced its own rankings, which helped shape the list of participants for future tournaments. Eventually BLAST, ESL, and FLASHPOINT managed to form a unified schedule, and their events had little overlap with each other.

FLASHPOINT's problems

The ESL brand was a leader on the professional CS:GO scene for years, but FLASHPOINT needed to prove its worth. It was more difficult than just claiming a big prize pool and promising a great LAN tournament in Sweden. The first criticism the organizers got already on the qualification stage of FLASHPOINT Season 1 when the tournament platform FACEIT allowed the players with VAC ban to participate in the qualification. The community failed to understand why crooks and cheaters were given such an unexpected amnesty by the organizers.

The big problem for the new tournament was also the coronavirus. Initially FLASHPOINT Season 1 finals were supposed to be played in an arena with a live audience — it was to be hosted by Ericsson Globe in Stockholm. Unfortunately, the pandemic foiled the plans of the organizers and they decided to play the matches in a closed FACEIT studio in Los Angeles without spectators. The teams managed to play one series there, after that the administrators sent all the participants home to finish the other games online: according to their words, for reasons of safety. 

The FLASHPOINT Season 1 trophy was made in the form of a machine gun. It turned out to be a super difficult task to get it to the winners through the airport customs

Despite the difficulties with scheduling and logistics, FLASHPOINT Season 1 finally took place, but soon after that a conflict between the tournament operator and the CS:GO Professional Players Association (CSPPA) broke out. The CSPPA allegedly failed to fulfill their responsibilities in preparation for the first season — sabotaging their work with the league's sponsor and refusing to negotiate tournament rules with the participants. In connection with this, the organizers withheld $165K granted to the association for the right to use the names of its players. The CSPPA rejected the charges and promised to take legal action. After many arguments, the two sides managed to reach an agreement in private, at least on this issue.

It is interesting that Duncan “Thorin” Shields, an odious esports journalist, was originally appointed as the league's creative director. Shields is one of those people who's being quite straightforward on players, teams and competitors. His aggressive social media polemics and trolling seemed to many people to be inappropriate and simply damaging to the FLASHPOINT brand. He was particularly harsh on Astralis and other ESL teams which didn't cooperate with the league. After the second season Thorin left the company and recorded a video criticizing FLASHPOINT for the lack of strong teams in the lineup. 

In October 2020, FACEIT announced FLASHPOINT Season 2 with a $1 million prize pool. They decided to hold the second tournament online, since it was still impossible to gather spectators at the stadium due to the coronavirus pandemic. It is interesting that COVID-19 still affected the event: in December, FLASHPOINT administration announced that the matches would be postponed because a few league members got sick.

Six months after FLASHPOINT Season 2, the organizers were entrusted with the organization of the European RMR tournament for the PGL Major Stockholm 2021. This was even more difficult to manage than their own league. The first big scandal erupted immediately after Anonymo Esport match against Ninjas in Pyjamas — the Swedes unexpectedly lost that series and then claimed technical problems and lost packages on the server. Danes harshly criticized the FLASHPOINT administration for their inaction, and later the judges canceled the result and allowed Astralis to replay the already finished match. This decision shocked not only the Anonymo players but also other league members.

Another curious episode happened with the French esports player NBK. First, FLASHPOINT representatives banned the player from playing for Double Poney team because he had a valid contract with OG, which also played in the tournament. Later the judges reconsidered their decision and allowed NBK to play but with the following condition: if Double Poney meets OG, NBK will be replaced by another player. Fortunately for the Frenchman, this measure was not required as the teams did not meet in the tournament. 

Other criticism came to FLASHPOINT for not following all the rules of RMR tournaments. One day, an HLTV.org journalist noticed that judges posted a wrong sum for buying teams during overtime — $16K instead of $10K. In response to a complaint, the organizers did not change the sum, but changed the rules for overtime by rewriting them according to their own terms. It is noteworthy that in other regions where RMR tournaments were held, teams played by the original rules.

FLASHPOINT events viewership

If we compare all of FLASHPOINT's events in terms of Hours Watched, we can see how the participation of top teams during the RMR tournament affected the audience reach. Compared to the second season, there was a 34% increase in Hours Watched numbers, a 20% increase in Peak Viewers and a nearly 39% increase in Average Viewers.

What happened to FLASHPOINT?

In June 2022 it became known that FLASHPOINT would no longer hold CS:GO tournaments. Organizers stopped their active work last year, the official league website no longer works, and social networks were last updated in the summer of 2021. According to Jacob Wolfe, journalist, the founders of the league failed to arrange teamwork and were constantly arguing with each other on crucial issues. Eventually almost all of the staff left FLASHPOINT. Many of them were dissatisfied with the company's administration.

It is interesting that almost all the teams that were partners with FLASHPOINT during the first two seasons now have either stopped their existence or disbanded their CS:GO lineups. The focus on the American region instead of the international scene was a mistake, because that's where the massive transition of players from CS:GO to Valorant began in 2020. 

B Site Inc. and FACEIT couldn't stand competition with other tournament operators, and their FLASHPOINT league would be remembered by CS:GO fans only as a series of scandals and unrealized ambitions. As for ESL and BLAST, these companies have managed to divide the professional scene between them, build clear season formats and find compromises in the schedule so that teams can make transfers and players can take vacations. The only truly major rival for these two tournament operators is PGL, which hosts the official majors from Valve. 

If we talk about audience reach, the latest tournaments from BLAST have accumulated 500-700K Peak Viewers.

The last big tournaments in the BLAST series

ESL tournaments and leagues are also doing well in terms of Hours Watched. The biggest numbers are recorded at the IEM World Championships in Katowice, there the Peak Viewers is steadily exceeding the mark of one million viewers. 

ESL's latest big tournaments

Right now, the IEM Cologne 2022 tournament on CS:GO is taking place in Germany, with 24 top world teams playing for a $1 million prize pool. We've already analyzed the audience in the group stage, which you can find here. More details will be available after the event is over.