Front Row edition: will Team Liquid finally win a Blast Pro Series event?

Los Angeles is the 4th stop on the Blast Pro Series circuit trail. Thus far, we have covered the series fly over three continents and witnessed three different teams lift up the big trophy.

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For the return to North America, the Blast crew prepared something entirely different for fans and audiences. Front Row is the newest concept model for a tournament aimed as a luxury experience for live viewers and online audiences alike. It promises a sense of closeness between players, talent, media, production and viewers by hosting an open production and exclusive team zones filled with bars and media corners. According to the folk at Blast, this has been in the making for a while now and a lot of thought has went into the development a fresh new tournament concept. Step one of its evolution is the LA event.

The tournament format also “suffered” a small change with the addition of Bo3 matches at the semifinals instead of just the grand final. The change should increase the duration of the event slightly, and in return enhance the competitive format of the whole event.

The six teams to roadtest the new event format are: Liquid, FaZe, NRG, mibr, Cloud9 and Renegades.

The global #1 seed Team Liquid is yet to win a Blast event this year. They made it to the finals twice (São Paulo, Miami), but didn’t manage to lift the trophy on both occasions. Their opponent in Miami was none other than FaZe Clan, who are once again hoping to snatch the trophy from right under Liquid’s noses. NRG is in close contention for that trophy as well. The NA squad has had a good few months coming into the summer season, but then followed that up with an abysmal performance at ESL Cologne. My guess is it will come down to FaZe versus NRG for a spot in the finals versus Liquid. As for the other three teams, everyone loves a good upset. Although, an upset of this magnitude would be a bit much for mibr, Cloud9 or Renegades, one can always hope the new event format is just the nudge a team needs to become the next Astralis. You never know right.

On the caster side of news, LA will mark return of Eefje “Sjokz” Depoortere to desk hosting duties after her debut in São Paulo. It seems the European League of Legends superstar showrunner enjoys a bit of CS:GO now and again and is a welcome addition to the standard complement of on-air talent.

We are stoked to welcome @sjokz back on our talent line-up for #BLASTProSeries #LosAngeles. She's here to rule the #FrontRow studio! ✊ More news on the talent cabinet coming soon. pic.twitter.com/3JUCyd5vY7 — BLAST Pro Series (@BLASTProSeries) July 2, 2019

The Blast Pro Series Los Angeles 2019 kicks off with MIBR vs Renegades / FaZe vs NRG on Saturday July 13th at 20:00 CEST (11:00AM local) at Twitch.tv/blastproseries