Cloud9 reportedly paid $900,000 for BLAST spot

On the most recent episode of HLTV Confirmed, Chad "SPUNJ" Burchill claimed that Cloud9 had acquired Evil Geniuses' BLAST's Member Team slot for $900,000, citing "reputable people" who had voluntarily reached out to the Australian caster.

I'm not going to say by whom, but I had multiple people send me some messages... They told me roughly 900,000 dollary-doos. These were reputable people who mentioned these kind of sums to me, which was quite curious. I didn't even message them, they reached out to me and told me how much it was.

It was interesting when I heard that figure for a year and essentially two group stages which is what they would have been paying for. There is revenue share that they get from BLAST that is very significant, which covers more than 50% of that anyway.

SPUNJ's allusion to the spot only being available for a year calls back to Valve's decision to remove the "franchised" league structure by the beginning of 2025. This decision marks the end of the closed-off BLAST Premier league and ESL's Pro League, which promised guaranteed spots and revenue sharing for teams that had paid for member slots.

The reported $900,000 is in line with previous reports, especially given the upcoming expiration of the spot, of teams paying to gain entry for BLAST's Premier member slots. In 2020, BIG reportedly paid more than $1 million for 100 Thieves spot when the American organization completely exited Counter-Strike.

Additionally, MIBR also sold their spot to Heroic in 2022, however the price was not revealed.

BLAST's partnered organizations are now:

Dust2.us has reached out to Evil Geniuses, Cloud9, and BLAST in order to confirm the reported figure. Evil Geniuses declined to comment.