A format finally aligned with the scene’s most-watched tournaments
On the eve of the StarLadder Budapest Major 2025, it is clear that this event will not simply be the fourth Major of the Counter-Strike 2 era. Valve announced on Tuesday that it will also be the first Counter-Strike Major whose grand final will be a BO5, a shift that the scene has been anticipating for years. Until now, Valve and tournament organizers have consistently reserved BO3 for the title-deciding match, even as the rest of the circuit has shown that BO5 grand finals can comfortably retain audiences.
Recent numbers make that point unmistakably: IEM Cologne 2024, which is not a Major but traditionally ends with a BO5, surpassed the one-million mark with 1,051,810 peak concurrent viewers for its final, making it one of the rare non-Major events to cross that threshold. The same pattern appeared at IEM Katowice 2025, which peaked at 1.29 million viewers for a Team Vitality– Team Spirit BO5 final, again at a standard ESL event rather than a Valve Major.
When those figures are compared with the 1.53 million viewers of the last CS:GO Major in Paris in 2023, or the 1.85 million of the first CS2 Major in Copenhagen, it becomes evident that longer series do not deter viewers, quite the opposite, provided the match carries high stakes and features elite teams.
MR12 finally makes BO5 compatible with a Major grand final
What makes the timing of Budapest 2025 even more coherent is CS2’s transition to MR12. As early as 2023, Valve stated that competitive play would move from 15 to 12 rounds per side in order to shorten series and bring them closer to the modern esports standard. The result is that a BO3 on CS2 is already noticeably shorter than it was on CS:GO, as seen throughout the 2024–2025 season. In that context, extending the grand final to a BO5 no longer creates an unmanageable broadcast marathon.
Photo by Josip Brtan/HLTV
Finally, it is worth stressing that high-stakes BO5s are almost always the matches that break viewership ceilings, because they concentrate the teams audiences most want to see. Cologne 2024 had Natus Vincere and Vitality, Katowice 2025 again featured Vitality, and in both cases the events comfortably passed the one-million mark without the “Major” label.
That is the narrative thread running through the Budapest Major 2025: until now, the Major was the scene’s most prestigious tournament, but the most-watched finals were often the BO5 ones elsewhere on the circuit. In 2025, those two realities finally converge in a single event.
Header Credit Photo: StarLadder
– Mehdi “Ztitsh” Boukneter –
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