Interview with BLAST's Andrew Haworth: 2025 changes, Paris Major, esports winter

The Commissioner of BLAST Premier spoke about the past and future of the circuit in an exclusive interview.

As Andrew Haworth, BLAST Premier's Commissioner since February 2021, sat down with HLTV in one of the private boxes located in the Etihad Arena, the last match of the season, pitting Vitality against FaZe, was only hours away. But the purpose of the interview was not to examine the final ahead but to discuss the future of BLAST's circuit and of Counter-Strike esports as a whole.

It had been only four months since Valve announced that closed-circuit leagues will cease to exist at the end of 2024, as tournament invites will need to be determined by qualifiers or the developer's own ranking system. The decision will bring a seismic shift to the Counter-Strike landscape and force ESL and BLAST to reevaluate their tournament circuits, which for years have operated under a partnership model.

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Yet there doesn't seem to be even an ounce of concern coming from BLAST, which believes that the quality of its product will speak for itself. "The fans will hopefully watch the event that's the most compelling," Haworth told HLTV in a wide-ranging interview. "And we're confident that BLAST can provide that for them."

The 2024 Premier circuit will feature a new partner in Cloud9, who acquired Evil Geniuses' spot, and Haworth said that it will potentially have more teams, though he was coy when asked about an expansion. For the first time since 2021, the World Final will not bring the curtain down on the season; that honor will be reserved for the Perfect World Shanghai Major as Valve has ruled that Majors should take place right before the player breaks, in June and December.

Haworth discussed an array of other topics in the interview, including BLAST's look on the Paris Major, the recent announcement of a new venue for the Fall Final, and the impact of the esports winter on the company's operations and relationship with partners.

We're here at the Etihad Arena for the BLAST World Final, but the fan turnout doesn’t quite reflect that. I guess you can understand that the community is a little bit disappointed that this is described as a world final, but there have been only a couple hundred fans in the stands.

I think we focus on the excitement of the event. We come to a new region, with a fantastic partnership with Abu Dhabi Gaming. We have grown the fan base. There are more fans in the venue than we had last year, and we'll have a lot more today [grand final] as well, based on the ticket sales. The viewership figures are good; we are growing an event, and that's what we want to focus on.

The product that we put on is for a global audience. It's a combination of the fans on the ground, the experience we can give to the players, and the experience that the global fanbase watching at home has. You can't have every event at the same location. You want to grow out and take events to the sort of core territories. Obviously, we’ve committed again to Copenhagen for next year and London, where, although we haven't had an event there, has a good, strong Counter-Strike fanbase. And we want to bring other events to new territories and grow the fan base. We want more people to see and love the game that we all love.

We are now two years into a three-year deal with AD Gaming. Can we assume that the event will return here next year?

We're working on a longer-term strategy with Abu Dhabi Gaming and building that out. They put an incredible amount of work and effort into building the whole kind of gaming ecosystem in Abu Dhabi and the wider region. They're a real hub of all of that work, from the work they do with publishers, sort of very small local game developers as well, to building out careers, to building out esports tournaments, and to hosting big international events like the World Final.

And it’s great to have a partner like that, one that we can work with, bounce ideas off of, and help grow gaming as a whole with. I want BLAST Premier to be the best esports event in the world, but I also want esports to be the best entertainment product in the world. And hopefully we can work with them to continue to grow that, and we'll be doing more things with them over the next couple of years.

Here, in the Middle East, there are Gamers8, now the Esports World Cup, Qiddiya, and the BLAST World Final. Would you say that this region is one of the core global destinations for esports nowadays?

I think we're lucky in esports that a range of cities and countries around the world see the value in it. This is an ecosystem that we all love, that’s why we work in it, so more people falling in love with the world that we work in is great. I think that those that can take a longer-term view and see the way that audiences are going to be entertained in any version of sports and esports across a five-, ten-year pattern and have the resources for that, they can start to invest in that, be ahead of that curve, and see that destination point.

We’re lucky to have some incredible partners in Abu Dhabi Gaming that see that vision and are building out a really solid base of esports engagement from all the work they do across all the different facets of the industry. More people getting involved in the game that we love and that you love is only a good thing, hopefully.

You’ve just announced that Evil Geniuses’ spot was acquired by Cloud9 in a very competitive bidding process. What can you say about the number of organizations involved and the bidding process itself?

Evil Geniuses have been a great partner for us over a number of years, and we’re very thankful for the work they have done with us. And we’re incredibly excited to have Cloud9 back in our ecosystem. They were involved in the early days of Pro Series, when I first joined the business. They've come back into Counter-Strike in the last couple of years with an incredibly strong roster, and they're a very solid organization. They're one of only four teams that have played all our finals this year, along with FaZe, Vitality and Heroic, so it’s not just a great brand, but also a really strong team as well. So that’s really exciting.

The interest was overwhelming. It was really reassuring and positive to see. We were overawed with the depth of interest in BLAST Premier and what we've created. We are really happy with Cloud9 and we’re looking at other opportunities to engage with more teams and extend as we grow into 2025.

So is an expansion something that you're considering at the moment?

We’re just trying to build out the best foundation for the transition to 2025 and make sure that we keep that relationship and build the brands that we have, together with our member teams, but also make sure we are still engaged with the wider ecosystem so that we can make sure we’re designing and creating the most exciting products for everybody.

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When you said that there was a lot of interest, that there were many organizations interested in acquiring EG’s spot, were you talking only about organizations that are already in the space or maybe organizations that are considering entering the Counter-Strike scene?

A bit of both. There are probably some very obvious ones that you and fans would have expected to be involved in the conversation and there were a number of ones that slightly surprised us that either were a smaller team that has perhaps got a real development and investment plan, or a couple of brands coming back into the CS world that maybe the timing was just a little too early for. But we’re excited to see that, I think that shows a great strength and depth in the interest in BLAST Premier, but also for the Counter-Strike 2 ecosystem as a whole.

At the same time, there are questions about what's going to happen with FaZe and Complexity. With GameSquare about to acquire FaZe, what can you say about the situation? Is this something you’re monitoring right now?

We’re definitely monitoring. Those are two of our member teams, so we’ve got active conversations with the teams themselves and with GameSquare. The acquisition hasn't gone through, so at the moment they are still two separate entities.I think that, if the acquisition went through in the way that it is currently presented, there would be some challenges to competitive integrity. All parties know that. We've been very clear and they've been clear with us on the challenges of that. And I think everybody is working incredibly hard to find a solution that ensures that that isn't the case, but obviously we don't know right now how that'll play out.

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Next year, the World Final will be held in November to accommodate the Major in December. It won’t be the final event of the season. There are two ways to look at it: this takes away some of the importance of the event because it won’t bring the curtain down on the season, but this also means that the teams will be at their very best, that we won’t have patchwork teams fielding stand-ins because they’re already thinking about next season. What camp are you in?

I'm very excited about the product that we'll put on, focused on what BLAST Premier is delivering. I think it's always been nice for the stand-alone events at the end of the year, but equally, it still culminates our year, and we’ve got our narrative that feeds through the season for that. I think that, for the ecosystem, it’s great to have the Majors moving to two fixed periods, we get them into kind of a December and June cadence, which we’re tweaking our way through with Valve. I think that gives everybody a really nice structure.

Rather than an annual calendar or season — we will still operate annually —, the Counter-Strike season will probably become two six months that culminate with the Major. I think that consistency gives us all something to help build and structure a narrative.

2024 will be a transition year for the Counter-Strike scene after Valve announced that the closed-circuit leagues will have to go away at the end of the year. What does the future of BLAST Premier look like?

I'm really excited by it. We are here to stay. We've been involved in Counter-Strike since 2017, and I've been here doing it since 2018. It's the bedrock of our business. We love it. We're incredibly passionate about it. And as we’ve seen with the interest in the EG slot, teams love it and the fans seem to really enjoy it as well. We’re focusing on growing, building out, and evolving a product into something that is what the teams want to see. Obviously, there have been critiques or questions around a kind of closed model. I think that was really useful at a time to help grow team brands and tournament operators working together to grow an ecosystem.

Valve have tried to put in something to try and change that, and we want to work, grow and build that so we can have a wider relationship with more teams, we can design more innovative formats, we can hopefully get more matches played in front of more fans in more locations. That's what we’re really looking forward to, and hopefully building something that is compelling for teams, fans and our partners alike.

What kind of tournament circuit do you have in mind?

It’s still early days, but we are looking at an element where we’re probably going to have the same footprint in terms of number of events, but they will probably have expanded formats. We will have more matches, obviously more teams, and the intention is to have more matches played in front of fans and more fans. We will have the high points of our finals, but all of our events will probably have an element that exists in a standalone sort of feature, but there will be a way of feeding through and interlinking between them so that you can keep the narrative. One of the exciting parts of 2025 is: How do you ensure that you’ve got those rags-to-riches stories?

People always use GamerLegion at the Major as the kind of obvious one, but I actually find the Into the Breach story more compelling. They came from the open qualifiers and reached the quarterfinals. Yes, GamerLegion nearly had the moment of winning a Major, but they kind of entered a couple of steps along the process. So you want to keep the bottom of the funnel open for that opportunity to come through, but at the same time, the fans want to see FaZe-Vitality, which we will get in a couple of hours. They’ve probably played four or five times in the last five or six months, those matches have always been finals or semi-finals, and they’ve been absolute bangers. That’s what people tune in for. They want the rags-to-riches story, but when we talk to the audience, they want to see the big matches as well. So we want to find the right balance.

You said that you want to have more matches in front of a crowd. Does it mean more events with a crowd as well? At the moment, you have seven events over the course of the year, if you consider the Showdowns, but only three of them with a crowd.

We’re looking to try and make that possible. Absolutely. It almost links back to some of the things we were talking about of destinations. We want to get to the core heartlands of the game. We want to make sure that those fans that are desperate for events get access to them. We also want to try and grow the game and grow our fan base and build out a more entertaining product. There'll be a mixture of styles and sort of scales of show, probably, and interesting locations. We're still working through a lot of that.

A closed circuit has been a vital part of BLAST since its inception. You had the BLAST Pro Series with a number of partner teams, then you expanded on that with BLAST Premier. How will this affect your business model?

Obviously, we built our foundation by having membership teams that kind of guaranteed attendance at our events. And we were able to work and help build the teams’ brands, and they were able to help build our brand and work together on that. We have an incredible position now that, as we said, there's a lot of interest in us as a product and from destinations, partners and teams. We've built a great footing, and we want to continue to grow and evolve that.

I think we will still design something that's hopefully the most compelling storyline for fans, with a clear narrative, that's the most compelling product for teams to be involved in, a compelling production so that people want to host our events and partners want to engage with us. So I think we're quite excited by the new world and how we can evolve in that, as well as how the whole Counter-Strike ecosystem can evolve.

Some people have been very critical of the format of BLAST Premier. You have the groups and then three months down the line, you have the season finals. And it loses some of its meaning because you might have different rosters, or maybe in those three months some teams have lost form. Is that something you’re going to revisit in 2025 to make sure you have a more cohesive product throughout the year?

Yes. There are a lot of things that we’re working through in designing 2025, like how the invite structure will work, where you do have a journey through and you can see a team progress up from maybe smaller tournaments to the top ends of tier one. That might be one of the challenges in a 2025 ecosystem in terms of how that works with the numerous events on.

But we want to make sure that the events that we build are all slightly unique, so there's a point of difference. I don't think it's great for the ecosystem if every event is a cookie cutter and looks exactly the same and feels the same. So you want to create, and I think we’ve always been very good at that, an innovative product that you can see behind us and not anywhere else. We want to build out the best show for everybody, whether that's fans, teams, or partners.

With the closed circuit leagues going away in 2025, do you think that it will lead to the return of some tournament organizers that have left the space in recent years, like StarLadder and PGL? Are you already in discussions with other TOs to try to work out the calendar for 2025?

I don't think it's possible to be in discussion with everybody because I don't know what their business plans are or what people are doing. I think there will still be an opportunity for those tournament organizers in the current ecosystem. That is probably one of the potential risks in 2025 of a potentially congested calendar. I think, though, that there will be, at various levels, room for all. People will still be able to run tournaments in different locations, on different scales, for different levels of teams. We're very confident and excited about our ability to provide the most compelling product for both the teams and the fans, and the growth routes that we can put in through that.

I think Valve have been quite clear on wanting a more open ecosystem. We're excited to see who joins back into the CS world, what tournaments people want to put on, and where they do it. We work, where possible, with tournament organizers to make sure there's a calendar that's as manageable as possible. But I think eventually the teams will choose the events and the partners they want to work with. The fans will hopefully watch the event that's the most compelling. And we're confident that BLAST can provide that for them.

From the discussions that you've had with teams, have they expressed concern about the possibility of a congested calendar, like we had in 2018 and 2019, which can lead to burnout?

It was challenging in those years. There were issues of burnout for players. Everyone has to take ownership of that. We're looking to put in a similar number of events in 2025. I'm not looking to come in and say, ‘We’ll run 20 weeks of the year.’ We’ve all got to take responsibility for trying to put together a compelling product, rather than just filling time for that sake. I think, hopefully, as the processes where invites are set and the Valve rankings become more ingrained in people's thinking and structures, people will understand that and teams will make strategic decisions against that.

Teams need to take a bit of ownership of that as well. You shouldn't play every event that you get an invite to and then get frustrated with burnout. But then we've got to make sure the commercial models for teams and players make sense so they don't have to do that. There is work with other TOs to try and align on that. But ultimately, there should be a world where there’s opportunity for everybody to come into the ecosystem, put on events, and hopefully, the most compelling product will win.

I wanted to talk about the BLAST.tv platform, which you announced in the lead-up to the Major. What are your thoughts on the numbers that you're getting on the platform? And do you think that it is possible that, in the future, you will only broadcast your matches there? Because that would allow you to monetize your viewership better.

We love the BLAST.tv platform. It gives that sort of engaged fan extra levels of control and extra levels of engagement with our product. I’m excited to see where we can take that and what that can mean for potentially other titles as well, one day. I don't think we're ever going to just broadcast on there. We want to make sure we're attracting as many fans as possible to our product because we think it's great and we hope the fans do, too. There will always be other language channels where people are going to come and watch in any language you can think of. And equally, there will always be a fan base that will go, ‘I will go to Twitch,’ or ‘I’m going to watch on YouTube.’ I can't think of a reason why we would want to cut that off.

But BLAST.tv does give, I think, a much more engaged and compelling way of watching Counter-Strike and interacting with our tournaments, and hopefully that becomes a destination of choice for fans.

And in terms of the numbers that you're getting on that platform, are you happy with the sort of response from the community to the platform itself?

The Major was a great success in driving traffic there and signups. It’s not where the vast majority of people are viewing, but it's a growing number. And those who are engaging with it are doing so deeply and regularly. And that's what is really sort of pleasing for us, that we've created something that is not just, ‘I'm going to turn up and watch. But I'm going to engage with it and really it becomes a part of my sort of daily, weekly, Counter-Strike experience.’

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BLAST will not be at the Royal Arena next year. Can you talk about the reasoning behind this decision?

It’s what we discussed earlier about destinations. Denmark is a great hotbed of Counter-Strike. We're really proud of how we've been part of that Denmark esports journey over the last five or six years and how we have made Copenhagen a destination. And it's great that, off the back of that, you've seen a Major go there. I think that's a testament to the work that we've done in building that as a destination.

The Major is in the Royal Arena in March. We have made the decision to put on a different style of event rather than copying, repeating, big stage, big show, the same thing, which I think we do incredibly well, in the Royal Arena. Moving to a different venue allows us to put on a different show, so that the fans in Denmark and the teams coming to Denmark will still get that BLAST experience, but they're not getting a cookie-cutter copy of what they had a couple of months before in the Major.

The venue that we're moving to offers us a couple of new ways of selling the show and presenting it, so that we can give the audience and the viewer at home a different experience. And so hopefully, they can feel something new and exciting. We're always interested in trying to evolve and build out new ways of entertaining people. So we're quite excited by what we can create.

Are we going to see some of those changes at the Spring Final in London already?

We'll always come up with some new ideas, and we've got a few that we're working on for London. But London will be... it’s a bigger venue, the Wembley Arena. It's really exciting. I don't think there's been a tier-one Counter-Strike event since the Major was there in 2018. So we're very excited to be back in London. There's been a huge uptake and interest in tickets and the audience for that. So we’re really excited about building what you would expect is the traditional BLAST arena show, where there will be some tweaks and production tricks that will hopefully blow people’s minds, but you should know exactly what you're going to get as a fan coming to Wembley Arena.

This year you finally got to host a Counter-Strike Major, something many people had been waiting for for a long time. Was the event a success, from BLAST's perspective?

It was an absolute privilege and a real honor to do, especially with it fortuitously being the last CS:GO Major, which we obviously didn’t know at the time. There is a lot of pressure when the fans and the community are asking you to do something. We’ve got to make sure we deliver on that, which I think we did. The show in the Accor Arena was incredible. I mean, not many shows get announced by a head of state. It was great to be able to do that and to have that level of interest from such a tier-one global city. I think we had about 50,000 people across the four days in the Accor Arena. That was amazing. And, obviously, we couldn’t control a home victory, but that certainly helped. And we learned a lot from doing that.

It was a very successful event for BLAST, a real moment of pride for a number of us, both staff and our freelancers and team around it. The French leadership and ministers that we took around were blown away by what esports is and the sort of passion and vibrancy of it. They said they had never seen an audience be constantly engaged in that in all the sports they had had there in the past. It was a great experience, and we learned a lot from it.

Would you say that it was a good test, considering we’re moving to an open circuit, so it is possible that you will run tournaments with more teams than normal?

Yes, absolutely. It was commented on at the time by a number of people. People wanted BLAST to do it, but they were like, ‘Well, great, but BLAST has only ever put on great shows with eight teams or 12 teams.’ That was part of what we said about the responsibility and challenge of it.

We learned a lot, we worked through that, and we're really excited about it. We also built out relationships with many more teams than we previously had. So, in a typical year, the BLAST Premier circuit probably involves 20, 24 teams, across our member teams and the Showdowns. By the nature of the process in the Major, we're in active conversations with around 50 teams around the world now, which is great.

The common perception is that TOs run Majors at a loss. What can you say about that?

I can't comment on other people's business models or how they run them, but I can say the Major was a successful, fantastic experience for us, and something we'd be really honored to do again in the future.

And in financial terms?

It was a really successful event for us.

Fair enough. Valve is already open to proposals for the 2025 and 2026 Major. Is there a chance that we will see BLAST running another Major? Have you already made a bid?

We’re having lots of conversations with Valve at the moment. As you know, the ecosystem is changing. We're speaking to them regularly on a number of things. And it would be a great opportunity for BLAST to be able to run a Major in the new ecosystem.

In your annual report for 2022, you announced an 11.6 million euro loss. You have also recently raised almost 13 million euros. At the same time, ESL is now being backed by Saudi Arabia, which wants to be a global hub for esports and gaming. When you are running at a loss, is it hard to compete with a company that has such deep pockets? Does it force you to be more creative in order to put together a successful product?

I think we’re being creative anyway, rather than being forced to be creative. We’re focusing on innovation and working with publishers to actively design an ecosystem that works for all. Esports is a new world still, and it’s growing very quickly, and people want to invest in it. That’s good. If there’s more people falling in love with the game that we love and the esports ecosystem that we love, that’s not a bad thing. That's hopefully bringing more investment that allows businesses that are structured well to be successful, it allows more fans to engage with it in different territories, and it allows more teams to potentially see pathway routes to excellence. Hopefully, that’s a good thing for all of us involved.

We're now going through what has been referred to as the 'esports winter,' the first big crisis since 2008. We’ve seen some organizations leave the space altogether. We've seen some companies slash their marketing budgets. How is this affecting your operations and your relationship with partners?

It’s been an interesting time over the last 18 months. In esports, there has perhaps been an overvaluation of companies that have had a sort of recalibration. I think that in any kind of moving and volatile market, those businesses that are quite mature and well set, but also kind of nimble and creative, will generally do well. We pride ourselves on being very flexible. We put on a lot of events, we’ll jump into new titles and opportunities, and we'll work very closely with publishers.

I think that the relationship between publishers and TO is very important. To make sure that we understand the ecosystems they want to create, and to help them design them so that we can make sure it's going to be compelling for the teams and for fans. And the work we do with the teams is really important. I don't think, even in a world of non-membership, that we will have less engagement with teams. We will probably have more, just with more teams now. And so understanding the key drivers and the key players in the industry and working closely with them helps us all refine and build products that are going to work and be successful, in terms of financials, viewership, and entertainment.

Finally, what are your goals and plans for the future?

BLAST is definitely here to stay. We’ve tripled in headcount size in the last three or four years. Our revenue has gone up by 11 over the past three years. We're really excited about some of the opportunities we've got coming up in the future. And we'll share some of those over the coming weeks and months. We're really proud and passionate about the team that we have and the journey that everyone has been through in this company. We’re focused on building and creating really exciting products, events and titles for fans and teams to enjoy, and hopefully building relationships with the game developers as well, that they see as valuable.