Team Vitality and Natus Vincere will meet in the BLAST Premier Spring Finals on Sunday after winning their semifinal matches on Saturday in Lisbon, Portugal.
Vitality held off G2 Esports 2-1, and NaVi defeated OG by the same score. They will vie for the $200,000 first prize, plus a World Final berth and 4,000 BLAST Premier points.
Vitality fell behind 10-6 on their first map, Dust II, but rallied to win 16-13. On Inferno, G2 built an 11-3 lead and cruised to a 16-8 victory. On the deciding third map, Nuke, G2 built a 10-7 lead, but Vitality scored nine of the final 12 rounds for another 16-13 victory.
Dan “apEX” Madesclaire of France posted 61 kills and fellow Frenchman Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut finished with 59 kills and a plus-11 kills-deaths differential. Nikola “NiKo” Kovac of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Aleksi “Aleksib” Virolainen of Finland each had 53 kills for G2.
NaVi pulled away from a 7-7 tie to win their first map, Dust II, 16-9. OG build a 14-10 lead on Inferno, and after NaVi won three straight rounds to make it 14-13, OG took two of the final three rounds for a 16-14 win.
On the deciding map, Mirage, the teams were again tied 7-7, but NaVi won four of the next five rounds and went on to a 16-10 win. Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev of Ukraine led NaVi with 74 kills and a plus-23 K-D differential, followed by teammate Denis “electroNic” Sharipov of Russia at 72 and plus-16. Abdul “degster” Gasanov of Russia led OG with 59 kills and a plus-9 K-D.
The championship of the $425,000 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive series is being held at Altice Arena, the largest indoor arena in Portugal and one of the biggest in Europe, with a capacity of up to 20,000. The Spring Final champion will earn $200,000 along with 4,000 BLAST Premier points and a spot in the $1 million World Final in December.
Eight teams were separated into two groups in a double-elimination format, with the top three teams from each group advancing to the single-elimination playoff bracket. All matches are best-of-three.
BLAST Premier Spring Final 2022 prize pool and points distribution
1. $200,000, World Final berth, 4,000 BLAST Premier points — TBD
2. $85,000, 2,000 BLAST Premier points — TBD
3-4. $40,000, 1,250 BLAST Premier points – G2 Esports, OG
5-6. $20,000, 500 BLAST Premier points — ENCE, FaZe Clan
7-8. $10,000, 250 BLAST Premier points — paiN Gaming, BIG
–Field Level Media
