As much of an interesting alternative these events were initially to the usual tournament grind, a decent chunk of the community seems to be getting tired of the BLAST Pro Series. It’s understandable: all-but monopolizing Astralis for a high-variance format with lots of meaningless games and an emphasis on the in-person audience making it impossible to follow the whole event online is a bit of a mess. Here are a few suggestions to improve the competitive stature of these tournaments without sacrificing their unique, short-but-sweet concept.

The BLAST Pro events have three selling points: having top teams in attendance, the guarantee that you’ll get to see them play throughout the whole event, and a “unique” format. How can we keep all these elements intact – and perhaps even enhancing some of them – while also increasing the competitive integrity of the tournament? After all, bad tiebreaker rules (just ask anyone unfortunate enough to start on T side Nuke about using the rounds won as a decider) and the odd anomalies of draws make the set of often-meaningless best-of-ones all the less impactful.

To answer this question, we have to unpack the white lie behind the second selling point. Make no mistake: the notion that you’ll get to see six competitive matches played by your favorite side at a BLAST event is absolutely not true. Once a team is out of finals contention, it’s tough to be motivated to take the rest of it seriously – just ask NiKo, who’s gone on record in a recent HLTV interview saying “you just want to make the finals and you don't care if you finish in third or sixth place”. With that in mind, how about a format that is a little more serious from a competitive standpoint and quickly puts the less-impressive sides into an alternative “fun” bracket?