Majors were always like sacred places of pilgrimage for the fans of competitive Counter-Strike, and this year’s StarLadder Budapest Major is no exception. If you walk the halls of the MVM Dome, the location of the playoffs, you can hear people speak English, Hungarian, Chinese, Ukrainian, Dutch, Russian, and any other language you can imagine.
It’s a celebration of Counter-Strike as a whole, and many fans walk around, sit, eat, and cheer shoulder to shoulder with supporters of the rival teams. Everyone has a favorite, but love for the game is what brings fans of even those teams that didn’t make it to the playoffs to the arena.
Vitality, the biggest favorite
Walking around the halls of the arena, you can see the jerseys of many teams, even those who were eliminated early. Super cheerful Muharrem from Türkiye was wearing the Aurora jersey and the BIG scarf — XANTARES’ fan through and through. His biggest surprise of the event so far was that The MongolZ made it this far with a substitute player. When we asked him who he thought was going to win it all, he didn’t even have to think: Team Vitality.
This sentiment was repeated by Noah from France, which is entirely unsurprising. He didn’t speak much English, but “ZywOo MVP!!!” doesn’t need much translation.
Michael and Thomas, two fans from Czechia we found near the Blacklyte booth, didn’t need to be asked about who they support. Proudly wearing the FaZe Clan jerseys and devil horns, they were busy writing Karrigan’s name on the sign when I stopped them and asked what their biggest surprise of the event was. Their answer managed to get a chuckle out of me: they said that they did not expect beer in Hungary to be as good as it was. They may be FaZe’s diehard fans, but both were quite realistic in their winner predictions. Michael put forward Team Vitality, while Thomas said he was convinced Furia would get it. Sadly for him, this prediction was dashed by Na’Vi yesterday.
Hometown hero?
Curiously, even on the day of MOUZ’s game with the local Hungarian player Ádám “torzsi” Torzsás in the starting lineup, not a lot of their jerseys were to be found in the halls of the arena, which were very much dominated by the FaZe colors.
We did stop a couple of locals, though. Dominik traveled from Debrecen to cheer for torzsi, and very passionately said that he was very much winning it all on the home soil. Adam said he lives within 20 minutes of the arena, and this is his very first big Counter-Strike event. He also very much believed in MOUZ, but it was not meant to be. Dominik and Adam met online while playing CS:GO, and this was their first meeting in the real world. Sadly, both were quite shy and refused a picture to be featured here.
Natus Vincere army
Hungary is quite close to Eastern Europe and is also quite accessible for travel, so there are lots of NAVI and Team Spirit fans around. Everywhere you go, you can hear Ukrainian and Russian being spoken and player names cheered for loudly.
But these teams have global fanbases, and this fact is very easily demonstrated at big events like this.
We chanced upon the Overwatch and Marvel Rivals pro player and coach Mark “Lv1Crook” Leveleki, who was celebrating NAVI’s map 1 victory over Furia with his Austrian friends. Both questions of who they were supporting and who’d win the whole Major were answered with loud “NAVI!!!” cheers. One of the friends did say he was supporting FaZe, but he was promptly booed by the group and forced to change his mind.
Considering how passionate NAVI’s fanbase is, it was a moot point to ask anyone with the black and yellow jerseys in hopes of getting different answers, and the same was true for the monochrome Furia jerseys.
We did get a funny answer from Gheorghe from Romania — he said he hoped The MongolZ would win it all, the day after they were eliminated by Team Vitality. It’s all good, though; they will definitely come back stronger next time.
Wandering the MVM Dome halls, we met this curious creature, a StarLadder Chicken who was kind enough to stop and take pictures with anyone who asked. We asked too, of course, but sadly, we weren’t able to get any predictions out of it. Chickens do not speak English after all!
Overall, Team Vitality got the most responses and is quite a heavy favorite according to the fans at the arena. Furia was a close second in the responses, but the late drama saw them eliminated by Natus Vincere, whose army of fans could skew any survey.
Semifinals for the StarLadder Budapest Major 2025 are starting later today, stay with us to keep up with the event!
