The Growth of CS:GO’s Major Championships Continues

Source: Pixabay

There are certain games that will always be termed as being true esports staples. Be they the proper strategy fests such as both Starcraft and DOTA or first-person shooters such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, there is always going to be room for such games within the competitive fold. What this means is that there are plenty of prestigious tournaments in an ever-growing competitive scene, and the CS:GO Major Championships definitely have a major role to play here.

 

Competitive play within Valve’s popular shooter actually predates the first Majors tournaments by name, with the release of Counter-Strike 1.6 in 2000 and the first significant tournament, the Cyberathlete Professional League Winter Championship, taking place in 2001. It was only following a year of CS:GO existing in 2013 that Valve provided a partially-community-funded $250,000 prize pool for the first Major. Following this, Valve announced that they would partner with organizers to offer three Majors a year, which has largely been adhered to since then. Combine this with the fact that competitive gaming has grown exponentially and it makes sense that the scale and scope of the tournaments have grown as well

 

The years of tournaments and Valve-based backing have left the CS:GO Majors in a rather fortunate position with the upcoming iteration in Stockholm, marking out the first tournament since 2019. The backing from Valve, for instance, has meant that for the first time a $2 million prize pool has been offered, which has doubled from the $1 million that’s usually on offer. This PGL Major in Stockholm also marks the second time that the Romanian organization have hosted a big Valve-sponsored tournament, having also hosted one in Krakow. Poland in 2017. The current defending champions from the Berlin Major 2019 are Astralis who, with that victory in Germany in 2019, are now the record holders for having won the most championships in CS:GO history.

This tournament isn’t until October and November, however, but outside of the big CS:GO Majors, there are indeed plenty of other tournaments that occur, especially at the rather high levels. For instance, there’s plenty of Electronic Sports League or ESL tournaments that occur in not only Counter-Strike but also other classic e-sports titles such as both Dota 2 and Starcraft II. Furthermore, much like a lot of the other CS:GO tournaments that run, the ESL competitions can be fiercely contested. This has been demonstrated by the CS:GO ESL tournament betting odds that have the matchup between the Izako Boars and HONORIS that features odds of 1/2 and 6/4 respectively.

 

It’s definitely worth noting that the CS:GO Majors have formed part of a formidable backbone for not only professional Counter-Strike esports but also the competitive scene in general. Without the inception of the Majors tournament, it could be said that not only CS:GO esports but also the entire discipline, in general, may not have been as successful as it is today.