Astralis Aren’t Beating The Allegations

The Danish organisation is once again embroiled in a scandal all because they think they are above the rules. Turns out BLAST agrees with them.

Picture courtesy Astralis press pack

Astralis recently made yet another roster change, sacrificing yet another young player on the altar of immediate success that never seems to arrive. There’s nothing newsworthy about that alone but the player coming in certainly generated a few headlines. Casper "cadiaN" Møller has historically always been the Dane that didn’t belong but now he finds himself as the leader of his country’s biggest organisation, one that played a large role in him being kicked from Heroic. Additionally he finds himself reunited with teammates who had declared him impossible to work with and the star player being the one to hand over the keys. For those in esports who love the drama more than the games you’ll likely be mainlining Astralis for the rest of the year.

That drama got started especially early as in their announcement they stated that Møller would be making his debut at BLAST’s Fall Final, which at the time of writing is due to start in two days. The problem with that is the cut-off for registration was September 4^th a whole thirteen days before Astralis had announced the signing. Indeed, we know from Astralis Founder and Chairman Nikolaj Nyholm that at that point they hadn’t even entered into negotiations for the player as the transfer came together in “less than 36 hours.” So surely this was just a clerical error and they actually meant Møller would make his debut at the subsequent IEM Rio competition.

Alas no. It seems Astralis, an organisation who have always assumed they deserve special treatment, have claimed the young player they cut from the roster – Alexander "br0" Bro – is having a “medical emergency” one that seems to have started round about the time they signed their new player and is incredibly guaranteed to last the duration of the tournament. As lies go it’s about as obvious as “I’m fine.” Not that you need to even intuit that it’s complete horseshit. Bro’s own management have publicly declared him “fully healthy and ready to perform” on X.com. Despite this BLAST have granted the special dispensation to use their new player despite it clearly and obviously violating every rule in the book BLAST wrote themselves.

Nikolaj Nyholm. The man who would have it all.

We’ll get into Astralis’s sordid history in esports in a more detail soon but first here’s some context around the history between BLAST and Astralis. Right out the gate it’s probably of note that BLAST was founded by RFRSH Entertainment a company co-founded by the aforementioned Astralis Chairman Nyholm. They also owned Astralis, having only agreed to sell them in 2019 in a move that also saw Nyholm leave the tournament operator to fully concentrate his efforts on the team. Yes, we went through a period of time where a tournament operator fully owned a team that participated at their tournaments and everyone thought that was fine. However, even after the sale many felt Astralis were still showing a preference to their former owners, skipping a number of tournaments run by BLAST’s business rivals to prioritise attendance at inarguably smaller BLAST events. This was dubbed the BLASTRALIS era by the community.

More than that though BLAST is a Danish company and Astralis are the biggest esports organisation in Denmark. As we’ve reported before BLAST is also owned in part by the Danish government, several loans having been converted into equity in lieu of payment. Their events are often held at The Royal Arena in Copenhagen. Obviously if you want to fill out that stadium you want Astralis to be there. You also don’t want to rock the very comfortable Danish boat they have. Both entities have ties to their government and understand whose flesh to press to get things done. A falling out between the two wouldn’t behoove either party. Astralis need to be at tournaments to meet sponsor obligations and receive their revenue share. BLAST need Astralis to attend so they can sell tickets, mechandise and send those attendance numbers we love so much in this business to their sponsors and partners.

When you put it like that I guess it’s totally fine to bend the rules, right? Well if you think that let me say to you “Gå og læs noget andet din idiot.” The first problem is that BLAST have been unreasonably rigid with other teams in the past. For example in the Spring Groups in 2023 FaZe player Håvard "rain" Nygaard wanted to be present at the birth of his child so the organisation requested to use Kristian "k0nfig" Wienecke as a replacement. BLAST even initially approved the move and then walked it back saying there’d been miscommunication. Then there was G2 at the 2024 Spring Final where a delayed visa for their star player Ilya "m0NESY" Osipov meant they had to use their coach, Wiktor "TaZ" Wojtas, who hadn’t touched competitive Counter-Strike in two years. Not long after that at the Fall Groups Heroic ran into visa issues for their newly acquired AWPer Abdulkhalik "degster" Gasanov, forcing them again to use their coach Eetu "sAw" Saha in their games. They were denied despite extenuating circumstances. It is also worth noting that it is a matter of public record that in this case complaints were made by other BLAST partner teams that were never publicly named. I’d urge you to have a guess at who one of those teams might be.

BLAST’s 2025 calendar might have some notable absentees now

The inconsistency and clear favoritism isn’t just maddening. Now more than ever the need for competitive integrity matters. Valve have created a cohesive ranking in the circuit to stop all the “partnered leagues” fuckery that was excluding hard working teams from getting into tournaments. That ranking system will dictate all future invites for 2025, Regional Major Ranking placements and eventual Major placements too. BLAST’s tournament is included in the rankings for those 2025 events so a higher placement can have a significant impact on the future for the teams. BLAST throwing Astralis a rule-breaking advantage spits in the face of every other attending competitor and if it works to the Danish team’s favour will ultimately cost someone dearly. This is why it simply cannot be tolerated. It’s not just a temporary waiving of a rule. It’s a tournament operator facilitating one team’s success over every other team with which they are partnered. It’s yet another example of why someone has to assume the mantle of a governing body for this circuit and if Valve won’t entrust that to someone then it’s absolutely a responsibility they cannot shirk.

That it is once again Astralis leveraging their influence to get preferential treatment is no surprise. As the individual who has held them accountable the most and exposed almost every lie they’ve told I know them better than most. They are up there with the dirtiest esports organisations I’ve covered in twenty years wading through filth. They practice all manner of dark arts to get what they want and for some reason they mostly always get it despite everyone knowing what they’re doing. Sadly I can’t even use the tired phrase “if this were a real sport they’d have been expelled” because we know that isn’t true and hasn’t been for years. The upcoming Manchester City whitewash will hammer that nail home.

They came onto the scene as part of an attempt to control multiple organisations, the RFRSH Entertainment “media rights” scam being exposed through public records I presented in reporting.

The mutual ownership was denied by RFRSH initially before pivoting towards a public admission and stated they had never deceived anyone about the ownership. They also represented themselves as a “player owned” organisation to the public when in reality the players owned a tiny fraction of equity. Those same “player owners” couldn’t even get time off at request after suffering from burnout after engaging in the type of schedule that seems unbelievable to any sports person. Five tournaments in fourty-three days that saw the players go from Denmark to China, China to America, then back to Denmark and then finally on to Bahrain. Remember this was an organisation that at one time quite publicly skipped tournaments to avoid jetlag, so what changed? Well during this time they had a combination of contractual obligations to tournaments and had recently floated on the Danish Nasdaq. After denying them the time off they requested the global pandemic of 2020 was underway and they asked those same players to take a 30% paycut. Just a few months later mysteriously their then Sports Director and walking disaster Kasper Hvidt publicly stated that they needed a ten man roster to prevent burnout. I mean, that’s incredible given the lengths the players had to go to in order to get some time off but when you consider the likely use of those new players was to be “scabs” that could be used to leverage contract negotiations it’s especially grotesque.

I don’t want to gloss over anything so I’ll throw in that in 2018 they made national news because one of their shareholders, Tommy Ahlers, had become the Danish Education Minister at the same time the Danish Parliament awarded two million kroner to RFRSH, the then still owners of Astralis and BLAST. This award might have been denied had the parliament been aware of Ahlers involvement but he filed his financial disclosures three weeks late meaning it wasn’t a factor in the decision.

It’s also now a matter of public record that they engaged in what might best be described as corporate sabotage against their rival organisation HEROIC. This publication exposed this in a release called “The Hunden Files” which showed that the disgraced coach Nicolai "HUNDEN" Petersen was working alongside Kasper Hvidt to improve Astralis ideally at the expense of his employers. During this time Petersen was punished by the Esports integrity Commission for leaking documents from Heroic to Astralis ahead of them both competing at IEM Cologne. As he served this ban Astralis found work for him through a subsidiary, a production company Pixel.tv, but sources had stated Petersen was essentially coaching the team. After ESIC agreed to shorten his ban ahead of threats of legal action Astralis rolled Petersen out as their “head analyst.”

Picture courtesy Astralis press pack

Unbeknownst to the community HEROIC and Astralis were in a legal dispute with each other over these and other activities. As part of those proceedings Petersen had his electronic devices seized and messages between him and Kasper Hvidt were preserved. This publication was able to obtain and publish sections of those messages that showed Petersen had essentially agreed to join Astralis in principle as early as March 2021. The fallout from those messages led to both Petersen and Hvidt being terminated from their positions at Astralis and Astralis were fined $100,000 by ESL for violating the conflict of interest rules of their partnership.

Most recently they also went out of their way to once again destabilise HEROIC through the acquisition of Kasper Straube. The Head of Performance at HEROIC was hired as Hvidt’s replacement and seemingly picked up where he left off, his relationship with Martin "stavn" Lund being key to the roster move. It was Lund who essentially usurped Casper "cadiaN" Møller in that team dispensing an ultimatum that it was either him or his IGL. HEROIC chose Lund and then Lund left anyway with many assuming it was all done by design.

That is all one organisation and I’m sure I’ve missed out half a dozen or so other examples of how they operate. This incident with BLAST is the latest in a long line of behaviour from a management team who think they are bigger than the sport and the tournament operators that facilitate their ability to compete. You can’t be too mad at them for thinking they can get away with it when tournament operators prove them to be right every time they do. And let’s also be clear with what you’re up against. If you speak out against Astralis as a member of broadcast talent you can be sure they will complain about it. They issued an ultimatum to BLAST after firebrand pundit Duncan “Thorin” Shields insulted Nicolai "dev1ce" Reedtz on then Twitter that they must warn him not to mention them again for the duration of the broadcast. Shields of course quit the show. When analyst Janko "YNk" Paunović said the organisation had “turned to shit” their Director of Communications bizarrely threatened him by saying he would “tell some stories” about him. They scolded HLTV for running an article pointing out that they are breaking the rules stating “we have no further comment and it shouldn’t be necessary to educate a Danish-owned media company that we cannot discuss any individual employee." In short they will use every dirty trick and business relationship to shut down any and all criticism of the things they do.

To that end I would say to every other organisation in attendance at BLAST’s Fall Final it is imperative you do something. ESIC are toothless, Valve are absent and the player’s association is dead. Sadly you must be your own advocates in the absence of others to do it for you. The method will be difficult because boycotting the tournament hurts only yourselves. However, in 2025 we know that tournament operators have packed the calendar meaning some events will have to be skipped just on the basis of pure logistics. Speak to your management and let them know that is this stands BLAST might just so happen to be the events that are least palatable to you. Astralis might think they’ve got them by the balls but I’d wager you guys can squeeze harder.

As for BLAST what a sad way to totally discredit your upcoming circuit and isolate yourself from players that have been positive about your competitions. The community won’t forget this in a hurry and now every time there’s a question around Astralis – and history shows us there’ll be more of those – the assumption will be that BLAST is “on their side,” an untenable position for a tournament operator. It’s one thing for Astralis to think they are above the rules. You don’t have to agree with them.