BLAST Bounty Season 2: How the First Stages Went and LAN Finals Predictions
The first tournament of 2025 was BLAST Bounty Season 1, which surprised with its experimental approach both in terms of the draw system and prize payouts. Each team has its own seeding and reward for their “head.” Weaker teams choose their future opponents from higher-tier baskets, and this continues all the way to the finals. No lower brackets or other “second chances” – lose a game and you’re eliminated from the competition.
The main feature lies in the reward for defeating a strong team, as you’ll earn more money after just one victory. Therefore, teams from the lower basket face a choice: pick a weaker opponent or go for a bigger “fish.” Last year, Spirit won this “fishing” competition, beating Aurora in the finals, and we’ll examine how things stand in the second season in this material.
Stage 1. Round of 32
The first stage proceeded without major surprises: none of the teams that chose their opponents managed to win and ended their tournament run. This fact immediately sparked heated discussions in the community, with most expressing the opinion that the format wasn’t very successful and was rather boring.
The main complaint is that only 8 teams advance to the LAN finals, while the rest are forced to play online. Initially, this looked like an advantage for less experienced teams, but practice showed they were unable to capitalize on this and provide viewers with at least one upset out of 16 matches.
There were inevitable verbal disputes on social media X involving Kassad and Mauisnake, where the former criticized the format, calling it “the worst in history.” Mauisnake disagreed, citing several advantages, but his opinion could hardly be called objective, as Kassad pointed out, reminding him that he works for BLAST.
On the other hand, is the tournament operator really to blame that underdogs couldn’t put up a fight, knowing well in advance who they would choose as opponents, much earlier than the teams being chosen found out? As always, the truth lies somewhere in the middle, and we suggest drawing conclusions over a longer distance rather than after just two seasons. Especially since the second stage turned out much more interesting.
Stage 2. Round of 16
Here, teams like G2, Astralis, Virtus.pro, and Liquid were choosing their partners for matches to reach the LAN stage. These collectives can defeat any opponent on a good day, so it was very interesting to watch the confrontations involving them.
Let’s start with G2, who for some reason picked Team Spirit as opponents, which is absolutely incomprehensible. Maybe they wanted to earn more money for eliminating the Dragons from the tournament, or maybe they cast a spell on donk, because the IEM Cologne MVP suddenly played his worst BO3 series of his career. However, even spells against Danya didn’t help the Samurai, and they could only take one map from the weakened Spirit.
VP made the most logical pick in FaZe, who haven’t been playing but literally suffering on the server for a long time. It must be admitted that the Bears are in approximately the same state, so the match looked extremely ambiguous. Teams alternately took 5-6 round stretches from each other, so there were many comebacks and turnarounds in the game, which this time ended in VP’s favor. It must be admitted that this victory is very important for the guys because they had already started to forget what the final stage of a tournament feels like.
Astralis managed to close out NAVI, which in current realities can’t even be called an upset, and the Danes’ choice proved more than justified. makazze and iM, who simply shone in Cologne, finished with ratings of 0.77 and 0.68 over three maps. After IEM Cologne, we wrote that NAVI’s results shouldn’t be overestimated because these two guys performed too well in the CS cathedral.
Liquid decided to take revenge for two defeats at that same IEM Cologne and succeeded unexpectedly well. FURIA showed absolutely nothing on the second and third maps, giving Liquid a ticket to Malta.
paiN, HEROIC, B8, and Legacy predictably lost to The MongolZ, Aurora, MOUZ, and Vitality, giving them their modest rewards for elimination from BLAST Bounty’s second season.
LAN Finals. Predictions for Events in Malta
Since teams will choose opponents not only for the quarterfinals but also for the semifinals, we decided not to wait for the first picks and predict everything from scratch. First, the choices seem quite obvious, and second, it’s much more interesting this way – otherwise, why would BLAST come up with such a format?!
Judging by the seeding, Liquid will be first to choose their opponent, and the choice is certainly not easy. Most likely they’ll want to play against The MongolZ or MOUZ. With the Mongolians, you can always count on them falling apart, and against MOUZ it would create a cool confrontation between siuhy and former teammates. We want to believe in the second scenario, but actually it’s not that important, as Liquid should be eliminated against any team from the first basket.
Next is Astralis, and they seem to be the most unpredictable opponent. After all, HooXi is doing colossal work and bringing the faded Danes back to their senses, returning their faith in their own abilities. Of course, their choice depends on Liquid’s pick, and they’ll also take MOUZ or The MongolZ as opponents, and honestly, they really have decent chances against both teams. Perhaps the Danes might even want to take revenge on Spirit for the Astana final, but we’d consider this option for the semifinals, in case HooXi and Co. succeed in the quarterfinals.
Especially since we’ll most likely see a CIS derby – VP vs Team Spirit, as the Bears probably won’t want to choose Vitality. And of all potential opponents, the Dragons should be more comfortable for the Bears, as inexplicable things often happen in matches between teams from the same region. In our opinion, this match has only two scenarios: donk finishes the match with his usual 1.50 and closes it solo, or the VP guys remember that once upon a time, all Eastern European players’ hands trembled against them.
And the Turks will most likely have to repeat their January feat and consolidate the result of BLAST Bounty’s first season, as until recently they were the last team that managed to beat Vitality in a BO3. We really want to see exactly this pairing.
Guessing what pairs will form next is much more difficult, so we suggest stopping here and enjoying the final matches of BLAST Bounty Season 2. Of course, we’d like to see a Vitality vs MOUZ rematch or MOUZ vs Spirit, but even more we’d be happy with underdog victories over stronger teams.
Otherwise, the tournament system will really have to undergo reworking, because getting 2-3 upsets in a tournament with 32 teams participating is really quite sad.
