Today’s first story is a two for one. First of all, Blast is going back to Portugal to recapture the spirit of what was probably one of the wildest esports crowds ever.
No scratch that. THE wildest esports crowd ever.
If that doesn’t give you a chill, we don’t know what will, but go see your doctor because there’s something wrong with you.
Anyway, Blast is going back to Portugal, but it’ll be without their only Portugese speaking team. Not that MIBR was going to qualify anyway, but they have actually sold their spot to Heroic.
We’ll come back to that in a second, because on Twitter, MIBR’s coach Nak said that the team sold their spot:
That raises a ton of questions, and obviously no one at Immortals Gaming Club who runs and owns MIBR, wants to comment on it. Because if they really wanted to do that, it wouldn’t have been communicated on Twitter, by the coach.
It seems realistic enough though.
When BIG bought their spot it was reported by Dexerto to be around $1M USD, and that sort of money should give MIBR the chance to rework their roster again, again, again, again, again, to maybe get some success.
The buyers are Heroic, who just like with ESL Pro League, are now entering another league with a buy-in. Good for them, and good for the competition. MIBR is 23rd in the world currently, while Heroic is 5th, so it’s a win for the fans.
On the other hand, Blast has now gone from 7 EU teams and 5 NA/SA teams to 9 EU teams and 3 NA teams in less than a year. The Nordic market consist of 20 million people, while the US alone accounts for more than 350 million, so it feels weird to us. Maybe FURIA weren’t bidding?
There are now more Danish players (14) in the Blast partnered teams, than there are teams partnered (12). Which is good for Denmark, but bad for business.
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