As a result of Valve’s new ranking system considering prize money collected, female team Imperial Valkyries were invited to attend the BLAST Bounty’s inaugural Play-in stage. In their first round, Imperial’s female team chose to play NAVI, shocking fans with their deliberate pick of such a strong opponent. The game between the highly popular Ukrainian squad and […]
As a result of Valve’s new ranking system considering prize money collected, female team Imperial Valkyries were invited to attend the BLAST Bounty’s inaugural Play-in stage. In their first round, Imperial’s female team chose to play NAVI, shocking fans with their deliberate pick of such a strong opponent. The game between the highly popular Ukrainian squad and the female team fell just short of half a million concurrent viewers, setting the record for the Play-In and even outperforming some of the tournament’s quarterfinals.
Heard you want a 2025 FNCS announcement?
HERE IT IS!
The opening Play-In stage of Bounty Season 1 received markedly more Peak Viewers than both the Spring Groups and Showdown from 2024. Imperial Valkyries’ decision to play NAVI created one of the most discussed and followed Counter-Strike matches in recent memory, all enabled by BLAST’s innovative format. Comparing the event to the Spring events of 2024, BLAST Premier’s 2025 calendar is off to a stronger start already.
Replacing the previous structure where seasonal Groups and Showdowns led to the Final, BLAST have moved to stand-alone events for the future of the Premier series. The Bounty, Open, and Rivals events are each held twice a year, with a relatively even spread of prize money. In the past, the opening Groups and Showdown featured lower prize pools, as the organizer saved up for the million-dollar World Final at the end of the year. Critically, BLAST has gotten rid of this World Final event for 2025 and onwards.
BLAST’s new cash-incentive Bounty system (Counter-Strike)
Only the BLAST Premier: Spring Final 2024 came close to the Bounty’s peak viewership with its grand final between NAVI and Team Spirit. However, apart from this popular grand final, viewership in 2024 was lower across the board. Not only did the viewership of Bounty Season 1’s Play-in stage far exceed the Spring Groups and Showdown of 2024, but the playoffs stage of the Bounty also received over 100,000 more Average Viewers than the Spring Final.
The entertainment-forward nature of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour 2025 – Weissenhaus was mirrored in its viewership statistics, which was led by the world’s most popular chess player. However, looking deeper than the peak moment of each event, the freestyle format was even more popular. In terms of average concurrent viewers for the entire event, the Weissenhaus tournament was watched by roughly 10,000 more viewers than either Tata Steel or Champions Chess Tour.
To kick off Counter-Strike esports in 2025, BLAST hosted the inaugural season of their new Bounty tournament. Following new rulings by Valve on how teams are invited to top events, organizers have had to adjust how they operate. BLAST has taken this opportunity to experiment with a brand-new tournament system, bringing some fresh ideas to the Counter-Strike scene.
While both League of Legends and Fortnite have significantly updated their systems for 2025, it’s too early yet to say how this has affected viewership. However, following the example set by BLAST, these titles could record strong results if they get fans invested.
Carlsen: “In very long time controls with deep preparation you can mask a lot of your deficiencies as a chess player, because you have a lot of time to think and to defend and also, you have the preparation. So I think for me to play [in the World Chess Championship], those would be the main things: more games and less time.”
In terms of peak concurrent viewership for these three events, the Freestyle Chess tournament stood out from the other two. While the more traditional chess tournaments reached their peak viewerships during the ultimate moments of the final game, the Weissenhaus freestyle tournament instead reached its peak viewership for Magnus Carlsen’s third-place match against Javokhir Sindarov.
Of course, not only third-party organizers are leveraging new formats to keep audiences engaged. Many official esports organizers, who run the top-tier tournaments for their games, are updating their systems too. While these changes are not as drastic as an entirely new release, as with Counter-Strike, they still serve to freshen the esports scene of the organizers’ games.
? Trios
? ,000,000 FNCS Prize Pool
? Siphon Trials – a series of tournaments to test versions of Siphon for its return in Competitive
Fridman: “When you challenge a great chess player like yourself to look at a random starting position, that feels like it pushes you to play ‘pure chess’ versus memorizing lines.”
From the Lex Fridman Podcast #315
As the esports industry develops and competition for viewership intensifies, innovation keeps broadcasts fresh and creates more engaging content for both competitors and audiences. Since 2020, more and more organizers and game developers have pushed new content to stay relevant in an ever-evolving esports environment.
We’ll have more information on these trials soon, stay tuned and get ready for 2025! pic.twitter.com/AjTpBElQ3iThe BLAST Premier Bounty Season 1 2025 invited the 32 top-rated squads and assigned the top 16 a cash bounty according to their rank; lower-rated teams could choose their opponent from the higher-rated sides, and if they won, claim their bounty. Simply put, the Bounty system added a cash incentive for teams to secure underdog victories. Not only is the Bounty system itself interesting, but allowing competitors to choose their opponents opened the door for teams to take matters into their own hands.Following the Grandmasters’ philosophy, the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour hosts shorter games for the Play-ins and Grand Slam Group Stage, between 5 and 15 minutes time control, making for a punchier viewing experience. The first Grand Slam of the tour recently took place at the Gut Weißenhaus in Wangels, Germany, where it became one of the most popular chess events of 2025 so far. — Fortnite Competitive (@FNCompetitive) September 8, 2024
Esports is not the only competitive gaming industry experimenting with innovation. The world’s oldest game, chess, is also trying out a new format: Chess960, also known as Fischer Random or Freestyle Chess. This style of chess has taken the world by storm this year, supported by world-leading chess figure Grandmaster Magnus Carlsen.
The World Final event was not only expensive for BLAST, but was not statistically more popular than their other, lower-cost tournaments. Ultimately, Counter-Strike fans follow which teams compete at events, not necessarily the event organizers. A third-party World Final was not worth the investment, and BLAST’s new calendar of fresh, stand-alone events for 2025 onwards is a modernized system for Counter-Strike’s current esports market.
The lock-out draft system was originally experimented with in League of Legends’ tier-two Chinese league back in 2022. It was tested further and further regionally, eventually making it to the tier-one scene on a trial basis. Following positive feedback throughout 2024 and early 2025, Riot Games made the decision to set the format as the new standard across the globe.
Popularity boom of Chess960, or Freestyle Chess (Chess)
Five-time World Champion Magnus Carlsen is a faithful proponent of Chess960; he co-founded the on-going Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour along with Jan Henric Buettner. Carlsen has a tremendous effect on the popularity of the alternative format, pushing it forward as a more exciting style of the classic game. Appearing on podcaster Lex Fridman’s show, Carlsen elaborated on his issues with the classical format and the philosophy behind Chess960.
Following the pandemic boom for esports viewership, and online broadcasting in general, the years directly after were challenging in comparison. Esports organizers have dealt with this in different ways, some establishing a more structured esports system, bringing significant gameplay balancing changes, or offering in-game rewards for viewers: at their core, bringing something fresh to the table is the heart of these measures.
[…]
By embracing innovation and pushing the boundaries of traditional play, organizers can boost engagement and drive sustained growth in viewership and fan interest. This could be key in setting them apart from other third-party organizers and sometimes even ahead of official tournaments.
Fortnite moving to a trios format follows that of rival battle royale esports title, Apex Legends. The two have been competing closely across the past five years, with Epic Games likely hoping these changes will give them an edge over their competitors. Since Fortnite’s peak popularity in the mainstream years ago, the FNCS has been updated many times to develop an audience, and maybe the new switch to trios will give it a boost.
Carlsen: “For sure, that’s the whole idea.”
Epic Games also just recently changed the format for its official Fortnite Championship Series, one of the world’s top PC battle royale esports. After years of two-man teams, the FNCS 2025 is keeping things fresh with teams of three. Years ago, trios were used in Fortnite’s official series, but it changed to duos in 2022 as part of an overhauled esports format.
Comparing the two starts to the year, it is clear that BLAST has taken up a much more dominant position in the Counter-Strike scene in 2025. While the new Bounty system indeed greatly affected event viewership, other changes from BLAST are worth considering too, such as the condensed BLAST Premier calendar and prize pools.
It’s still early days for the new Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour, but there is clearly an audience for Chess960 among fans of the sport. The fresh positions are dynamic matches are not only keeping the players invested, but viewers too.
Counter-Strike 2, while controversial and sometimes polarizing, not only set CS:GO’s final Major up for success, but modernized the game for new esports audiences. On top of increasing its overall watch time in livestreaming during 2024, Counter-Strike’s esports viewership increased by over 50M Hours Watched. CS2’s release in 2023 has helped the franchise revitalize its viewership, and come closer to its pandemic-era peaks. The first CS2 Major, the PGL Major Copenhagen 2024, reached over 1,850,000 Peak Viewers (PV): making it the third-most-popular Major in Counter-Strike history, falling just behind two Majors from 2021 and 2022.
Fearless Draft is the new normal for League of Legends esports. The MOBA title is one of esports’ oldest favorites, but its esports scene is still being tinkered with, and perfected. League of Legends is the worlds’ leading esport and records multi-million viewership peaks yearly, but Riot Games still felt the need to freshen things up for viewers.
While innovation can come in many forms, official and third-party esports organizers experimenting with new game modes and formats are leading the way in 2025. Third-party events with non-traditional formats offer unique viewing experiences for fans, distinctive and separate from official tournaments. Unique viewing experiences can mean exceptional viewership, as seen this year already. Esports Charts has taken some examples of tournaments with exciting new formats in 2025 and examined how the new format impacted viewership.
An example from the pinnacle of esport, Riot Games introduced the “Fearless Draft” to tier-one League of Legends esports events for 2025. Unlike the traditional drafting system for champions picks, this format prevents teams from choosing champions already played in the series. By forcing teams to demonopolize champions, Fearless Draft could better engage LoL audiences through more diverse gameplay, and for professionals, offer more strategic depth.
Why exactly is Chess960 so popular? Well, in classical games, which can last for hours, top-level chess players can plan up to 30 moves deep for various openings. Modern, powerful, and accessible chess engines have complicated this issue, with machines often ‘solving’ positions for grandmasters to memorize. Adding an element of randomization takes players out of their comfort zone, and encourages more exciting and dynamic matches.
The shift to trios was a major selling point for the 2025 FNCS season
Including the first Grand Slam of the new Freestyle Chess Tour, the beginning of 2025 hosted two other highly influential chess events: the Tata Steel Chess 2025, which has been taking place annually for almost 90 years, and the first event of the Champions Chess Tour 2025. Most impressively, the inaugural event of the new Freestyle Chess Grand Slam was more popular than the opening event for the established Champions Chess Tour, highlighting the large potential for the freestyle tour in the future.
The key feature of the format is that the position of the bank ranking, meaning all pieces except the pawns, is randomized each game. By giving players a randomized position, the game shifts focus away from opening memorization, instead highlighting creativity and original play. The first event of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour 2025 took place earlier this year, giving us the chance to compare its viewership to traditional chess tournaments.
The impressive viewership results of the BLAST Premier Bounty Season 1 2025 and the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour Weissenhaus underscore the growing impact of innovative alternate game modes, and highlight how creative formats can break through the noise of a crowded calendar.
