Image: BLAST
Both Spirit and G2 are off to a strong start in the first Tier 1 CS2 tournament of 2025.
BLAST Bounty Spring 2025, the first Tier 1 Counter-Strike 2 (CS2) tournament of the year, kicked off its eight-team main event on Thursday (January 24) with 
Team Spirit and
G2 Esports scoring 2-0 sweeps over 
HEROIC and 
BetBoom Team, respectively, in the quarterfinals.
With their victories, Spirit and G2 advance to the tournament's semifinals while HEROIC and BetBoom have been eliminated in 5th-8th place. Teams in BLAST Bounty Spring's main event are fighting for their cut of the tournament's unique $500,000 ‘bounty’ prize pool and BLAST Frequent Flyer Tokens.
Here's how all the action in the opening day of the BLAST Bounty Spring 2025 main event went down:
2-0
HEROICShanghai Major champions Spirit looked like they were still in championship-winning form as they routed HEROIC to start their campaign in BLAST Bounty Spring's main event. While Shanghai Major MVP 
Danil “Donk” Kryshkovets was still clicking heads as usual, it was Dmitry “sh1ro” Sokolov who showed out in the series to push Spirit to the semifinals.
The first map of the series in Anubis started with HEROIC in full control with a 9-3 first half lead on the T side. Spirit then woke up after the side switch with a 4-1 run that trimmed HEROIC's lead down to 10-7 in round 17. HEROIC scored one last round before Spirit racked up six straight round victories to complete the 13-11 comeback win behind donk's 25 frags and seven assists on 18 deaths.
Map two in Nuke saw Spirit win the first three rounds as the T side before HEROIC responded with three straight wins of their own to tie things up at 6-6. Round 6 would be the last one HEROIC won in this tournament, however, as sh1ro sparked an incredible 10-round run for Spirit that allowed them to close out the 2-0 series sweep. Spirit's AWPer recorded 19 frags on just five deaths in the closeout game, finishing the series with a server-best 39 frags on 19 deaths.
2-0
BetBoom TeamWhile HEROIC put up a good effort against Spirit in their first map, the second series of the day between G2 and BetBoom was not close at all. As the sole superstar on G2 following 
Nikola “NiKo” Kovač's move to 
Team Falcons, Ilya “m0NESY” Osipov proved that he could carry the team on his own in their first main stage match of the year.
Map one in Anubis saw G2 cruise to a commanding 10-2 first half lead as the T side, which included seven straight wins from rounds 2 to 8. G2 then won three more after the side switch to easily claim their first win of the series behind m0NESY's 20 frags and four assists on seven deaths.
BetBoom put up a better fight in map two at Dust2, though that only equates to them winning just one more round compared to Nuke. G2 kicked off the closeout game with five straight rounds before BetBoom responded with three straight wins of their own, after which G2 followed up with an eight-round streak to secure the 2-0 series sweep. M0NESY finished the series with a stellar 36 frags and 16 assists on 15 deaths.
BLAST Bounty Spring 2025's main event will follow a single-elimination bracket format. The lower seeds in Eternal Fire, BetBoom, HEROIC, and paiN will be able to pick their next opponents from among the higher seeds, namely Spirit, NAVI, Vitality, and G2. The main event will be hosted from January 23 to 26.
At stake will be the tournament's unique $500,000 ‘bounty’ prize pool and BLAST Frequent Flyer Tokens. Each team that participates in a BLAST Bounty event will have a certain amount of bounty money allocated to them based on their seeding in the tournament, with the highest-seeded teams having bigger bounties. The lowest-seeded teams had the chance to select their opponents from the high seeds in order to try claiming their bounties, significantly raising the stakes in the competition.
Teams can guarantee the money they will take home from a BLAST Bounty event by claiming 50% of the bounty won from each match. The other 50% of that bounty will then carry over to their next game, and be added to the winning team’s bounty.
Finally, the BLAST Frequent Flyer Tokens are awarded to teams based on consistent participation to BLAST events. At the end of 2025, a minimum of $2 million will be distributed to teams based on the number of tokens they earned throughout the year. For BLAST Bounty Spring 2025, all teams that qualified for the main event are guaranteed one token each, with three tokens being awarded to the winner of the tournament.
