Image: BLAST
Team Spirit started 2025 the same way they ended 2024; with a dominant tournament victory.
After closing out the 2024 Counter-Strike 2 (CS2) season by claiming their first Major championship in the Perfect World Shanghai Major, 
Team Spirit continued their winning ways to start 2025 by winning BLAST Bounty Spring 2025 with a 3-1 rout over 
Eternal Fire in the grand finals on Sunday (January 26).
With their victory, Spirit bagged the grand prize of $288,125 out of the tournament's unique $500,000 ‘bounty’ prize pool. Meanwhile, Eternal Fire settled for second place and $85,625 in winnings after a commendable run through the tournament, which saw pull off a couple of huge upsets before the victory ultimately fell to Spirit in the final hurdle.
Spirit and Eternal Fire both earned their spots in the BLAST Bounty Spring main event alongside six other squads after the tournament's 32-team qualifier from January 14 to 19, notably winning every single map they played.
As the reigning Major champions, Spirit put on a dominant performance en route to the grand finals as many expected. They first swept 
HEROIC in the quarterfinals in Anubis (13-11) and Nuke (13-3), before overcoming 
Natus Vincere in Dust II (13-9) and Ancient (22-20 in overtime) in the semifinals.
Meanwhile, Eternal Fire turned heads with a 2-0 quarterfinals upset over a 
Team Vitality newly reinforced by Robin “ropz” Kool in Anubis (13-9) and Mirage (13-11). The Turkish squad then followed that up with another unexpected victory, this time in a 2-1 thriller over 
G2 Esports, with wins at Anubis (13-11) and Nuke (13-10) to face Spirit in the grand finals.
1-3
Team SpiritEternal Fire once again proved they had what it takes to compete with the best teams in the world to start the grand finals. They came back from being down 3-11 to take a 16-14 overtime win in Anubis, notably neutering the impact of Shanghai Major MVP 
Danil “Donk” Kryshkovets and pulling off an incredible nine-round streak in the process.
Spirit were quick to shake off their map one loss, however, as Donk finally woke up to lead his team in tying up the series with a 13-6 win in map two at Nuke – which included 10 straight rounds to close out the first half as the T side. Donk finished the second game of the series with 17 frags and six assists on 15 deaths.
The pivotal third map in Dust2 saw Donk once again demonstrate why he's the best CS2 player in the world right now. Spirit utterly dominated Eternal Fire, winning the first nine rounds as the CT side en route to an utterly dominant 11-1 first half. While the Turkish squad managed to claim the first two rounds after the side switch, Spirit surgically won the next two to get a commanding 2-1 series lead.
Donk finished map three with a stellar 22 frags and seven assists on seven deaths. He even put up a couple of his signature multikill highlights, including three quick USPS headshots to start the map and four spray frags on the B site defense in round 12.
Eternal Fire put up a better fight in the final map of the series in Mirage, but that only amounted to eight rounds won as Dmitry “sh1ro” Sokolov reminded everyone that Donk isn't the only star player in Spirit. After the first six rounds of the map saw both sides tied up at 3-3, Spirit won eight straight rounds to get within touching distance of the trophy. Eternal Fire put up a heroic last stand with four straight rounds in response, but round 21 would see Spirit claim the first tournament victory of 2025.
Sh1ro finished the closeout game with 24 frags and one assist on a server-best eight deaths while Donk had 23 frags and seven assists on 17 deaths. Both players notably ended the grand finals with 78 frags apiece, though sh1ro had far less deaths at 39 compared to Donk's 63 – indicative of their respective roles as Spirit's AWPer and entry fragger.
BLAST Bounty Spring 2025 was the first Tier 1 CS2 tournament of the year, where a unique $500,000 ‘bounty’ prize pool and BLAST Frequent Flyer Tokens were up for grabs. Each team that participated in a BLAST Bounty event would 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 could 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.
