"Astralis can be a top 5 contender team"- SPUNJ on the Danes' potential in 2024, reflections on CS2's first year, and Spinx over ropz [Exclusive]

CS2's 2023 esports season officially came to a conclusion a few weeks ago. The year was filled with incredible surprises in terms of teams and players breaking out onto the scene. From teams such as GamerLegion to players like iM and NertZ making a name for themselves in the tier-1 scene, 2023 was a fantastic year for Counter-Strike fans all over the world.

The wide array of broadcast talent has remained reliable and exceptionally good at their roles by providing great analysis and banter. Chad "SPUNJ" Burchill is widely regarded as one of the best casters in the business today and is well respected in the scene for his cheeky humor and incredible color casting.

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SPUNJ talks about the CS2 Shanghai Major, his dream venue for a big event in 2024, and the broadcast shift in ESL Pro League

Ahead of the HLTV Award Show 2023, Sportskeeda Esports had the opportunity to chat with SPUNJ and discuss various topics ahead of the 2024 CS2 esports season. The Australian broadcaster gave insightful thoughts across a wide range of questions, such as the HLTV Top 20 placements and the current status of certain rosters.

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Q) How is the vibe currently in Belgrade, and how are you feeling ahead of the HLTV Award show?

SPUNJ: I have not seen anybody yet, but it is bloody cold. I went for a walk today to get some dress shoes because all I have right now is trainers, and I thought I should probably make sure that I have something nice on my feet.

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Q) How was 2023 for you considering it was the first year where CS esports officially made its full-fledged comeback to the LAN environment after the pandemic and online era?

SPUNJ: It was a great year. I love every year where I get to go and do my gig. However, the last couple of years have not been as crazy as it was pre-pandemic, like the 2019s, as it was a bit more open circuit and there were a lot of events. We sometimes sit down with the guys and look back at that period of time when a lot of us were away from home for almost 300 days a year.

It has been a lot more chill. Many things have had the opportunity to be more planned and focused. I think it is pretty good to return to these environments, especially when we go back to Stockholm 2021, where we were filling out the arenas there and continuing that with Antwerp 2022.

I think it has been a good place and it's been fun to see all the faces again and get everybody back into that vibe. There has definitely been a shift from the old days, as things are much more professional with everybody.

The players are not untouchable or anything like that, but they prefer to stick in their groups, so it is not as casual as having a couple of drinks at the end of the day like it used to be, which is good and bad.

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Q) Do you prefer to do events such as ESL Pro League over other big events like IEMs and Majors as the former usually has a much more laidback, chilled, and relaxed broadcast where the talents joke around and have fun a lot more on-screen?

SPUNJ: I think it has its place, especially with the type of event Pro League is as it runs for such a long time. This year, it is down to three weeks, which is nice. I think one of the important things with a lot of events, especially once that run for an extended period of time, is the way that they scale. Not everything can be super serious, as you want to save that for the arena matches where there is more on the line.

You still want to make sure you are giving all these teams, especially players who are on newer teams from smaller regions, a nod and give them what they deserve as professional Counter-Strike players or budding professional Counter-Strike players. Personally, I was one of the people behind the scenes who was pushing for this shift in the ESL Pro League and I am very happy to see that we have moved in that direction.

I do not know if it will stay that way going forward, but it is nice that we got to do it for a couple of seasons last year. One of the key factors that we wanted to try and get, which relates to the last answer I just gave, was hoping to get more players sitting with us in a casual environment and talking about the game.

For me, as a viewer in the past, that is what I wanted to see. That is something we have not been able to stick the landing on because the players have a lot more obligations to keep, but hopefully, we can break down more barriers and do more casual stuff.

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Q: Spinx was revealed as the fifth-best player on the 2023 HLTV Top 20 list. Do you think he deserved to be ranked higher than ropz and m0NESY?

SPUNJ: This is something that I find quite interesting even though I do some contracting work for HLTV such as me being here at Belgrade for the award show and also doing the HLTV Confirmed podcast, I do not have a horse in this race. I look at the placements and read the articles for the reasonings and go "Oh! That is interesting." but then I have my opinion of where I would rank the players.

I do not even think I could list you as a Top 20 from me that I would have thought about. I can tell you who the best player was in 2023 and I can tell you some other notable names who I thought had fantastic influence and impact. In terms of who should unequivocally be where I think I am a terrible person to be able to lay that down.

I saw the uproar over where frozen was placed and how m0NESY was placed above Spinx. I do not know what to say about the latter situation as they play completely different roles since one of them is an AWPer and the other player is a rifler. I factor in a lot of different things into that so unfortunately I do not think I can give you an answer to this question as I am following along with the list just like everybody else without the uproar.

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Q: Who do you think was the better player in 2023? Ropz or Spinx?

SPUNJ: I think in CS2, ropz has been one of the absolute best players. However, if you are looking at the year as a whole, one of the things that always sticks out to me is the Major wins, and we only had one Major last year where Spinx managed to lift the trophy. FaZe was also quite hit or miss this year, and whether or not you want to help and give them excuses with whatever they were facing, such as lack of motivation, is probably fair.

I think Vitality was the best team in 2023. Personally, I am looking for titles since you can have all the flashy plays in the world, so it really comes down to how you are measuring this. Spinx won the Major, so I will go with him for that factor alone.

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Q: Do you have a tier-1 team in mind that should make one particular change that could improve them and elevate their play to a new level? For example, Cloud9 potentially signing ArtFr0st to solve their AWPer issues.

SPUNJ: I think Vitality and FaZe are probably safe in this conversation at the moment. The example you have given with Cloud9 is probably one of the more obvious examples, looking at the top 10 overall. Having a team that wants to contend for trophies without an AWPer is rough to watch. I cannot really say Astralis as an example either, as they have a very strong roster going into the year.

Once we start talking about teams such as NIP, then we are well out of any top-tier conversation. I would be interested to see how Complexity would look like if they had oSee in the team instead of hallzerk. I do not know if that would elevate them to the top, whereas in Cloud9, you are obviously looking to get rid of HObbit and bring in an AWPer in his place, especially taking his age into consideration.

Everybody else on the Cloud9 roster has a lot of experience, especially when you look at the old NAVI core of Boombl4, electronic, and Perfecto. It would also be interesting to see, and some people have spoken about this as a bit of a rumor in the past, s1mple coming back into the NAVI lineup by replacing iM and being a full-time rifler. It would be curious to see how that dynamic plays out. I will give you a fun one. I reckon jks going to G2 to replace nexa would be sick. *laughs*

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Q) Do you want to see a big event in any particular city outside Australia?

SPUNJ: This is an interesting question because a part of me wants to think about activating other parts of the world and seeing if we can curate what the Counter-Strike communities look like in different parts of the world.

When I was thinking about this question, I thought about how much viewership we would get if we were live in Tokyo or Seoul and I do not know if it would be great. They would be awesome cities to go to, and they are cities that I have been to before. I do not know if it would suit a large Counter-Strike event. I do not know if we would get enough fans in the building.

It has always interested me that we have not done a large-scale event in Vancouver. It is quite difficult to get into Canada, and it is almost as difficult to get in there as it is to get into Australia, so maybe that is one of the reasons I also do not imagine it to be cheap, but overall, I think Vancouver could be fun.

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Q) The China RMR for the CS2 PGL Copenhagen Major 2024 had over 3000 registered teams. Do you think this is a good sign for the Shanghai Major later this year to be a successful event in terms of viewership?

SPUNJ: I am heavily invested in getting this part of the world a lot more activated in Counter-Strike, so I really do hope that the Shanghai Major pops off with a full stadium and people loving it. I think the interest in playing and the interest in watching are two different things, and it is a bit of a problem that we have been trying to solve for many years.

The big-name teams are going to be there in Shanghai since it's the Major, and it is also a city where I have had a lot of good times in the past. I think it is a good recipe for success, at least in person. I know as far as viewership and timezone goes, GMT+8 is not going to be the best for a lot of people across the rest of the world.

It will probably get frowned upon from that perspective, but if it can become a successful event that brings even more ground to China, then they could look to run more events that are maybe not just localized to Chinese teams but also include teams from Asia, Pan-Asia and Oceania and I think this would be key.

When we had America thriving, and all the Brazilian teams were living in the United States, I also lived there when I was a part of Renegades, so things like this could be awesome to see. If we could have this kind of circuit again, then Asia could have China as a hub for every region around that part of the world and even look to bring in teams from the Middle East, which could be very cool for Counter-Strike.

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Q) What is a bold prediction you have for a player and a team coming into 2024?

SPUNJ: There is so much hype around Team Spirit and donk. I think they are prophesied to do really well. I am going to make the Danes happy here. I think Astralis is ranked 19th in the world, which I do not agree with at all. They are a team that is definitely going to be within that top 10 this year.

I guess only time will tell whether or not they will be challenging for trophies, but with that roster, they should be able to do so. Astralis should be a team, with what they have available, a top 5 contender team for 2024. I think we may as well stay with Astralis for the player prediction by going with Staehr.

Staehr got a lot of shine when he was on Sprout, and he was great. We have not seen that in Astralis. Let us just say Astralis is thriving in the top 5; they are going to need Staehr to step up and be a player who puts some positive signs behind that namesake because his time in Astralis has been quite underwhelming so far.

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Q) Do you have anything to say to the Counter-Strike fans supporting you?

SPUNJ: Well, if people like what I do, then that is great to hear. I am always very honored to do my job, and I hope people keep watching Counter-Strike because it is a great bloody game.