​The ultimate guide to BLAST Pro Series Madrid 2019

BLAST Pro Series Madrid 2019 on May 10-11 is just around the corner and the preparations for this particular tournament ensures a show that has never hit closer to home for a host city. Both days open for a live audience and a qualifier final will see one local team advance to the main tournament against some of the best teams in the world.

Whether you’re watching the show from Twitch among 5 million other Counter-Strike fans, on TV in more than 130 countries and territories, or in the Madrid Arena - here’s everything you need to know about the historical day of esports in the city of Madrid.

Here is a compiled guide, answering questions you might have about:

• The teams coming to BLAST Pro Series Madrid 2019
• Enrique “xPeke” Cedeño Martinez, an esports legend coming to meet his fans
• The Season Leaderboard
• Full schedule for both days in Madrid Arena
• Tournament format, the BLAST Stand-Off, and prize distribution

Teams and players

Movistar Riders (Spain)

Movistar Riders are the reigning LVP champions in Spain and got the golden ticket straight to BLAST Pro Series Madrid Play-In in Madrid Arena on May 10th. Their opponents have been decided through a qualification process in which Vodafone Giants stood victorious. The two teams will face each other in Madrid Arena on May 10 to see who will bring glory to their name and attempt to defeat the world-class teams already invited to BLAST Pro Series Madrid. Movistar Riders have a familiar name on their team, Òscar “mixwell” Cañellas Colocho, who fans might remember from his time playing in North America and most recently in G2 Esports.

Roster:

Galder “bladE” Barcena: Coach

Alejandro “mopoz” Fernández-Quejo Cano: Rifler

Òscar “mixwell” Cañellas Colocho: AWP

Aitor “SOKER” Fernández: Rifler

Alejandro “ALEX” Masanet: In-Game Leader

Raúl “DeathZz” Jordán Nieto

Vodafone Giants (Spain)

Vodafone Giants (or Giants Gaming) is a Spanish esports organization led by Ricardo “fox” Pacheco, one of the founding members of the original FaZe Clan Counter-Strike team and among the best AWP’ers in the early days of Counter-Strike. Together with the rest of his Portuguese teammates, Giants managed to qualify for the BLAST Pro Series Madrid Play-In and will be facing Spanish team Movistar Riders on May 10 to see who will go through to BLAST Pro Series Madrid on May 10-11.

Roster:

Ricardo “Alm” Almedia: Coach

Ricardo “rmn” Oliveira: Rifler / Entry Fragger

João “KILLDREAM” Ferreira: Rifler / Entry Fragger

Ricardo “fox” Pacheco: In-Game Leader / AWP

Christopher “MUTiRiS” Fernandes: Rifler / Entry Fragger

Luís “ZELIN” Lousada: Rifler

Cloud9 (US)

Cloud9 have been suffering a lot of roster changes in recent times and the team is a bit behind on the Season Leaderboard. The rebuilding phase of the legendary North-American brand is seemingly over for now and Cloud9 are coming into Madrid with René “cajunb” Borg and stand-in Daniel “vice” Kim to test out their new recipe for success. Cloud9 have to put up a monstrous performance to catch up in this season so it’s easy to think that no team have prepared more than them.

Roster:

Ronald “Rambo” Kim: Coach

Timothy “automatic” Ta: AWP / Rifler / Lurker

Maikil “Golden” Selim: In-Game Leader

Will “RUSH” Wierzba: Rifler

René “cajunb” Borg: Rifler

Daniel “vice” Kim: Rifler / Support

Read detailed descriptions of the players here.

NAVI (Ukraine)

NAVI resides just outside the golden top 4 on the Season Leaderboard. If this CIS powerhouse can put on a world-class performance, and they usually can, they will move closer to the prestigious Global Final at the end of the year. With two players in the top 5 of best players in 2018, with star player Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev claiming the #1 spot. NAVI came in 2nd at BLAST Pro Series Lisbon 18 and 1st at BLAST Pro Series Copenhagen 18 where they defeated the home team Astralis in the grand final. This team is not to be underestimated.

Roster:

Mykhailo “kane” Blagin: Coach

Ioann “Edward” Sukhariev: Rifler / Entry Fragger

Egor “flamie” Vasilyev: Rifler / AWP

Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev: AWP / Rifler / Entry Fragger

Denis “electronic” Sharipov: Rifler

Danylo “Zeus” Teslenko: In-Game Leader / Rifler / Support

Read detailed descriptions of the players here.

Astralis (Denmark)

Astralis are still residing comfortably at the top of the world rankings but the 3x times BLAST Pro Series champions could not continue their success in Miami. The Danish team was off to a great start on the first day going 2-0 in the first two rounds of the group stages only to bomb out 0-3 the next day. This should be taken with a grain of salt. Astralis’ performance throughout the past year has been dominant and it’s way too soon to count them out as favorites for any tournament.

Roster:

Danny “zonic” Sørensen: Coach

Nicolai “dev1ce” Reedtz: AWP

Peter “dupreeh” Rasmussen: Rifler / Entry Fragger / AWP

Andreas “Xyp9x” Højsleth: Rifler / Support

Lukas “gla1ve” Rossander: In-Game Leader / Rifler

Emil “Magisk” Reif: Rifler / Lurker

Read detailed descriptions of the players here.

ENCE (Finland)

ENCE made their debut at BLAST Pro Series in São Paulo, where they came deadly close to ensuring themselves a final spot. In Madrid, they are looking to get more than just close to the victory. The Finnish esports organization has impressed people across the globe after their heroic run in the 2019 Katowice Major. On the brink of elimination in the group stage, the team made a reverse sweep and qualified for the playoffs. From there on out ENCE went on to eliminate the likes of Team Liquid and NAVI, making it all the way to the grand final of the Major.

Roster:

Slaava "Twista" Räsänen: Coach

Aleksi "allu" Jalli: AWP

Aleksi "Aleksib" Virolainen: In-Game Leader / Rifle

Jere "sergej" Salo: Rifle

Jani "Aerial" Jussila: Rifle / Entry Fragger

Sami "xseveN" Laasanen: Rifle / Support

Read descriptions for all the ENCE players here.

Ninjas is Pyjamas (Sweden)

Ninjas in Pyjamas, or NiP, is one of the oldest and well-renowned esports brands in the world. Between their legendary CS1.6 teams featuring names like HeatoN and potti, to their 87-0 streak at the start of CS:GO, the team has always been associated with excellence. Ninjas in Pyjamas longest run in BLAST Pro Series was in Copenhagen 2018, where the team made it all the way to the grand final. With Dennis “dennis” Edman back on the roster, the Swedes seek to rise in the rankings again.

Roster:

Faruk "pita" Pita: Coach

Patrick "f0rest" Lindberg: Rifler / AWP

Dennis "dennis" Edman: Rifler / AWP

Christopher "Get_RiGhT" Alesund: Rifle / Lurker

Frederik "REZ" Sterner: Rifle

Jonas "Lekr0" Olofsson: In-Game Leader / AWP

Read descriptions of all the Ninjas In Pyjamas players here.

Meet a real esports legend in person

Meet the legendary League of Legends persona and Origen founder, Enrique “xPeke” Cedeño Martinez in person. “xPeke” has announced he will go to BLAST Pro Series Madrid where he’ll do a meet and greet with fans coming to Madrid Arena. An extraordinary chance to have your gaming gear, shirts, and hats signed by one of the most influential people in the global esports scene - on his home turf.

Listen to Enrique “xPeke” Cedeño Martinez’s message to his fans coming to Madrid.

The Season Leaderboard

The format will include a point system covering the season’s tournaments, a global leaderboard and a season finale with the 4 highest scoring teams colliding in the semifinals and the big, Global Final event of world-class esports entertainment and Counter-Strike.

The 4 best teams will go head to head in two semifinals with the team topping the global leaderboard facing number 4 in the first semi-final, whereafter second and third will battle it out for the last spot in the Global Final. Both semis and the Global Final will be played in a Best of 3 format.

The Global Final will crown the 2019 BLAST Pro Series Season Champion, who on top of the trophy will win 350.000 US dollars of the 500.000 US dollars in the total prize pool for the 4 top teams.

The total prize pool of the BLAST Pro Series 2019 season is 2.25 million US dollars.

Full schedule for BLAST Pro Series Madrid 2019

Friday, May 10

16:00 CEST Play-In Show starts

16:15 CEST Qualifier Final (Best of three)

20:45 CEST Round 1

Cloud9 vs. Qualifier Winner

ENCE vs. NAVI

Astralis vs Ninjas in Pyjamas

22:00 CEST Round 2

ENCE vs. Ninjas in Pyjamas

NAVI vs. Cloud9

Astralis vs. Qualifier Winner

Saturday, May 11

14:30 CEST Grand Opening

15:00 CEST Round 3

Astralis vs. NAVI

Cloud9 vs. ENCE

Qualifier Winner vs. Ninjas in Pyjamas

16:00 CEST Beat the Pro

16:20 CEST Round 4

Astralis vs. ENCE

Cloud9 vs. NiP

NAVI vs. Qualifier Winner

17:40 CEST Round 5

ENCE vs. Qualifier Winner

Astralis vs. Cloud9

NiP vs. NAVI

19:00 CEST BLAST Stand-Off

20:00 CEST Grand Final (Best of 3 Maps)

Tournament format, BLAST Stand-Off, and prize distribution

In the initial group phase, all 6 participating teams face each other in a best of one map format. All teams will play at the same time, resulting in 3 matches running at the same time on stage, and 5 rounds of matches played in total. The first 2 rounds are played the day before the main arena event day.

The top 2 teams from the group stage qualify instantly for the Grand Final, which is played in a best of 3 map format. 3rd place in the rankings will challenge one of the remaining teams, in a showmatch format called BLAST Stand-Off.

BLAST Stand-Off

The BLAST Stand-Off map offers a wide range of fun, casual elements for lighthearted competition.

3rd place in the rankings will face off against one of the remaining 4th to 6th placed teams, in the $20,000 BLAST Stand-Off showmatch.

The BLAST Stand-Off will be played in a 1vs1 duel format on the BLAST Stand-Off Map, a map created specifically for BLAST Stand-Off, currently sitting at more than 100.000 subscribers on the Steam Workshop. Each duel is played first to 7 kills, of which the kills per duel are added to the team total.

After 5 duels the team with the most kills win the match.

The teams provide the tournament referees with their players numbered 1 to 5, corresponding to the matchup they are set to play. A player can only participate in one weapon discipline.

Each player will spawn with a HE grenade, Molotov, Flashbang and Smoke Grenade for each dual round. These will be replenished when a new round starts.

Each duel will use a different weapon.

Distribution of prize money

The prize pool of 250,000 dollars is distributed as follows:

1st place: 125,000 dollars

2nd place: 50,000 dollars

3rd place: 25,000 dollars

4th place: 15,000 dollars

5th place: 10,000 dollars

6th place: 5,000 dollars

BLAST Stand-Off winner: 20,000 dollars

Previous BLAST Pro Series tournaments

BLAST Pro Series Copenhagen

November 24-25, 2017

Winner: SK Gaming

BLAST Pro Series Istanbul

September 28-29, 2018

Winner: Astralis

BLAST Pro Series Copenhagen

November 2-3, 2018

Winner: NAVI

BLAST Pro Series Lisbon

December 14-15, 2018

Winner: Astralis

BLAST Pro Series São Paulo

March 22-23, 2019

Winner: Astralis

BLAST Pro Series Miami

April 12-13, 2019

Winner: FaZe Clan

See you soon Madrid!

The action starts in Madrid Arena on May 10 with the Qualifier Final where we hope to see the Spanish fans make deafening noise to show support for their local heroes.

Tickets for BLAST Pro Series Madrid 19 are still available via. Ticketmaster.

If you’re not going to Madrid, remember to tune in through our Twitch channel to see what the future of live esports entertainment looks like.