One of the biggest and most relevant pieces of information for CS:GO fans is when and where upcoming tournaments will be hosted.
It enables planning to attend in person, logistics to be ironed out, etc. We know the first CS:GO Major in 2020 will be Rio in May and we know the fall Major will be held from November 2 to November 15 2020.
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CS:GO 2020 fall Major location
But where will the 2020 Major be held - do we know?
Well, maybe we do. A super random piece of potential evidence, the "event tours" tab in the digital collectibles app Epics.gg, could have possibly given us a city to go with the dates that are already public knowledge.
Boston, huh? That's a pretty famous city for NA CS:GO... As you can see, the app has collections specifically associated with certain events that feature the teams that have agreed to have their players immortalised into collectible cards.
Previous events that have been covered include Intel Grand Slam events such as IEM Beijing, DreamHack events like DreamHack Masters Malmö, and BLAST Pro Series events like the currently featured event in the app, BLAST Premier in London.
But most importantly, there were also events in app with their own categories: for the FACEIT Major in London and the StarLadder Major in Berlin, which had both its own category and a subcategory under the event tours tab.
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This screenshot was taken about two weeks ago - on January 14 - showing a collection that does not yet have any cards to collect in it. If you go to this same tab today, this is what you'll find:
Clearly Boston is gone (both pictures are scrolled all the way to the bottom).
Now, normally I could see a tribute collection for the first NA Major victory being released. They did such an event for Zeus's retirement. That could have made sense, especially since the anniversary of that event occurred quite recently on January 28.
Two problems: that date would have been the time to release such a collection and it didn't happen. The other is that Cloud9 is not one of the partner teams with the app.
Welcome hosts
DreamHack has their sites announced for the rest of 2020, so they're out. However, there are some really noteworthy events coming up in 2020 that still have not announced venues. Such events that would likely be "big enough" to be included in the Epics app are:
- The CS:GO Autumn 2020 Major
- BLAST Premier Spring Showdown
- ESL Pro League Season 11
We already touched on the history of events like these being included in the app, so it SEEMS that it is within the realm of possibility that Boston may be the destination for one of these three.
Personally, I had really hoped to be one of the first to know where the Major after Rio would be hosted, but given how far off it is, I think that option one is less likely.
BLAST hasn't been stateside since BLAST Pro Series Los Angeles and the group drawings for the BLAST Premier Spring Season definitely make one think that some NA teams/brands will find themselves in the Spring 2020 Showdown portion of the competition. Endemic brand presence means good ticket sales, so this choice is a bit more feasible. Definitely an event that could be featured on Epics too.
But given that there's one really slot left for a Intel Grand Slam event to be hosted in North America, my best guess is that ESL Pro League Season 11 will be in Boston. There hasn't been a Grand Slam event in the US or Canada since ESL One New York and that's where the defending champions hail from.
Three events after the newly formatted event have had their locations revealed (The ESL One Rio Major, DH Masters Jönköping, and ESL One Cologne), but we still don't know where everything will be going down from March 16th to April 19th.
Back in the US of A?
The last time this event was on American soil was for Season 7 in Dallas, so I think that of the three this makes the most sense.
A lot hinges on one measly, circumstantial little screenshot, but perhaps at the very least the discussion of the event will force a TO's hand into announcing that they're bringing top level CS:GO back to the United States.
Related: Best CS:GO gambling sites of 2020. ]
Picture: StarLadder
