Major League Gaming Is Getting On Board The Counter-Strike Train Too

The amount of money getting pumped into the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive scene is growing exponentially. 2016 is already going to be a mammoth year, and that’s only set to increase with Major League Gaming announcing a US$250,000 event in late March.

In a release on their site, the North American eSports organisers have announced plans to give away US$250,000 in prizes for a CS:GO major in Columbus from March 29 to April 3 next year.

It will be “the first-ever Major” for the iconic team-based first-person shooter, whose major events have been centred around Europe so far (Katowice, Cologne and various Dreamhack events and qualifiers come to mind). The event isn’t MLG’s first affiliation with CS, with the organisation holding an exhibition tournament of sorts during the Aspen X Games.

It also adds to the burgeoning roster of CS:GO events with substantial prize pools in the first half of next year. January alone will see almost US$300,000 in prizes given away to CS:GO teams, with the Acer Predator Masters, Red Dot Invitational Finals and SL i-League StarSeries Finals taking place across Belarus, France and Germany.

The Game Show Global eSports has a US$200,000 prize pool for 8 teams in Lithuania from February 4, while MLG Columbus will be followed by a DreamHack event in Austin, Texas (which is likely to be a major of its own). DreamHack is also hosting an event in Leipzing, Germany, from January 22, although the organisation has not announced the prize pool for that event. And that’s not including ESPN’s plans for eSports or the televised Turner League for CS:GO, which will play host to one Australian team.