The CEO of esports tournament organizer PGL says there have been “concerted efforts from multiple parties to stop” running CS2 events. The most recent PGL event at Cluj-Napoca sold out tickets, despite many teams backing out of the tournament at the last minute.
PGL CEO Says Anyone Trying to Monopolize CS2 “Will Simply Fail”
Following the conclusive grand finals of PGL Cluj-Napoca, where MOUZ defeated Falcons 3-1, PGL CEO Silviu Stroie took to X (formerly known as Twitter) to celebrate. While celebrating the event, Stroie also spoke against the alleged efforts to thwart PGL, and called out those looking to monopolize the CS2 tournament circuit.
This is Cluj Napoca, this is Romania!!! We finally decided to run an event with audience in our home country and we were all blown away! By far one of our best events ever. We will continue to run CS2 events despite concerted efforts from multiple parties to stop us. Counter-Strike is a global phenomenon and any single company that will try to monopolize it will simply fail. Our next arena event is in May in Astana, where we expect another sold out arena full of [Counter-Strike] fans.
But who are the parties trying to stop PGL? Stroie’s comment about monopolization suggest he’s referring to the larger competing organizers in ESL and BLAST. Prior to 2025, ESL and BLAST’s primary Counter-Strike leagues featured partnered organizations, which incentivized those teams to prioritize those events over any other ones, save for Majors. Not only did those teams prioritize ESL and BLAST events, put the partner programs restricted the number of non-partnered teams that could qualify for those events.
These programs were effectively dashed by Valve changes made in 2023 that went into effect at the start of 2025. These changes banned partnership programs between team and organizer, forced all events to use Valve rankings or open qualifiers for qualification, and forced organizers to make compensation public. In an attempt to get teams to re-prioritize their events, both ESL and BLAST have publicized new revenue share models. According to HLTV’s Milan “Striker” Švejda, the lack of revenue share directly led to some of the top teams choosing to skip PGL Cluj-Napoca.
While PGL has not pursued a revenue share model, their Cluj-Napoca event drew praise for its format. Namely, fans were overall pleased to see a meaningful 3rd place match adopted, upping the stakes with an improved result in the Valve rankings and a big prize pool bump.
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