G2 Esports end trophy drought at BLAST Open Fall 2025, event hits 700K Peak Viewers

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The penultimate tier-1 Counter-Strike tournament of the year from BLAST Premier wrapped up on Sunday. Six winners of closed qualifiers competed at the LAN final of BLAST Open Fall 2025, with G2 Esports emerging victorious: their first trophy in ten months. The grand final was an electrifying five-map thriller, drawing a peak of over 700,000 live viewers.

The autumn edition marked the second event in BLAST’s new Open series, following the familiar format: 16 teams (a mix of top-ranked squads via the Valve Ranking System and regional BLAST Rising champions) were split into two groups, with three from each advancing to the main event. From there, MOUZ, M80, FaZe Clan, and G2 Esports reached the quarterfinals, while group winners Team Vitality and FURIA Esports earned direct semifinal berths.

  G2 Esports claimed their first trophy in 10 months / Image: Stephanie Lindgren/BLAST  

Ultimately, the long-awaited trophy went to G2 Esports. The team had endured a turbulent first half of the year, losing their leader Nikola "NiKo" Kovač and main star Ilya “m0NESY” Osipov, along with other roster and coaching changes. With top-4 finishes eluding them at major events and their season highlight limited to second place at PGL Bucharest 2025, G2’s trophy drought loomed large. Until now.

Arriving at the LAN final in peak form, G2 didn’t drop a single map on their way to the final. They faced some resistance from FaZe Clan (13:5 on Inferno, 19:15 on Dust II), but dismantled FURIA Esports comfortably (13:5 on Inferno, 13:5 on Mirage). The grand final against Team Vitality was a nail-biter: G2 stormed Dust II, suffered setbacks on Mirage and Overpass, then battled back on Inferno and clinched the championship on Train in a spectacular comeback.

Including the qualifiers, the tournament drew an average of 200,000 concurrent viewers. The final’s drama pushed the peak past 700,000 live viewers, with the milestone hit in the very last moments. Ultimately, the final easily became the tournament’s most-watched match, attracting 46% more viewers than the next most popular game, the G2 vs. FURIA semifinal.

Looking for comprehensive stats for this event — or any other — from the Esports Charts database? We provide a range of tournament data packages: pick the one that fits your needs and get access to detailed, in-depth insights.

The tournament racked up over 17 million hours of total watch time, placing it 10th among all CS tournaments in 2025. However, it just missed the top 10 for peak viewership, narrowly edged out by Esports World Cup 2025.

Looking at team audiences, only one squad at BLAST Open Fall 2025 averaged over 300,000 live viewers per match. The gap between first and fifth place was nearly 77,000 concurrent viewers, and intriguingly, a team made the top 5 overall without even reaching the main event — all their viewership came solely from the qualifiers.

Curious about audience metrics for esports teams and organizations? The Esports Charts Team Dashboard provides an in-depth database of viewership, including language and platform breakdowns, performance comparisons across different rosters, trend analysis, competitors comparison and much more.

Looking at the tournament’s overall performance, it’s clear that BLAST Open Fall 2025 didn’t deliver any standout milestones and trailed its spring predecessor across most metrics — though that’s not unexpected:

• For multi-event esports series, fall editions generally pull in fewer viewers than the spring splits, consistent with industry trends.

• Notably, several fan-favorite teams, including Team Spirit and Natus Vincere, didn’t make it to the Open Fall finals.

  For understandable reasons, the autumn event fell short of its spring counterpart   

While it underperformed compared to some CS tournaments in 2025, BLAST Open Fall 2025 was still among last week’s most-watched esports events. Other top events included FNCS Global Championship, which set multiple key viewership records in Fortnite esports, and Dota 2’s The International.

Read also: FNCS Global Championship became the most popular Fortnite tournament since 2019

With BLAST Open Fall 2025 wrapped up, Counter-Strike esports fans turn their attention to this week’s FISSURE Playground #2. The BLAST series will return in November for its final event of the year: BLAST Rivals Fall 2025, scheduled for November 12-16.