Team Spirit has won the BLAST Premier Spring Final Counter-Strike 2 tournament after beating NAVI 3-1 in the grand final.
The win sees Team Spirit become BLAST champions for the current season, taking home the first place prize of $200,000 and a spot at the BLAST World Final tournament that is due to take place at the end of the year. NAVI takes home $85,000 for second place, with Virtus.Pro and Team Vitality taking home $40,000 each for rounding out the top four.
The final kicked off on Ancient where Spirit took a 13-9 win to take first blood in the best of five final, and then moved on to Dust 2 where they did exactly the same thing, winning 13-9 and somewhat outclassing NAVI.
Map three was a major change, with NAVI getting off to a 9-0 start on Mirage, where it looked like something changed in the team. While Spirit did fight back to put four rounds on the board, this ended 13-4 and it looked like NAVI was back in the match. However, Spirit quickly bounced back on Nuke to take a 13-6 win and secure the match 3-1.
Both teams had reasonably easy routes to the final having topped their respective groups. NAVI took down Astralis 2-0 and FaZe Clan 2-1 to top group A, while Spirit took down G2, who were missing star player Ilya “m0NESY” Osipov due to visa issues, and Virtus.Pro. Topping the group would give them a pass into the semi-finals of the competition, with NAVI taking down Virtus.Pro 2-0 and Spirit beating Vitality 2-1 to secure a place in the final.
Despite a somewhat empty crowd on Friday, it appeared that Wembley Arena was packed for the final two days of the competition, with the UK crowd in good voice throughout. The success will no doubt be music to the ears of the event organisers, who announced plans to return to the venue next year for another Counter-Strike event.
With the BLAST Premier Spring Final now complete, the Counter-Strike pro scene goes on a month-long break as the enforced player break kicks off. No top level tournaments will run during the next month, giving players a chance to have a rest and not travel around the world for the first time in a while. When competition returns, teams will be working towards the Shanghai Major later this year, before turning their attention to the Austin Major next year.
