U.S. sees biggest player number increase between Majors of any country

With the expansion to 32 teams for the BLAST.tv Austin Major, countries were naturally going to field higher player representative numbers than before. But it's the host country that's experienced the biggest increase from Perfect World Shanghai.

11 players representing the United States will compete at the Austin Major in front of a home crowd, up from only four in Shanghai. This increase of seven is the largest increase of any country with players competing in Austin: China and Turkey representation both increased by six players, and both Sweden and Mongolia representation improved by five.

The USA is also tied for 3rd with Sweden in total number of players in attendance, behind Russia at 2nd with 17, and Brazil at 1st with 22.

This is also the most amount of American players at a Major since before the COVID-19 pandemic. The last time this many U.S. players competed at a Major was at IEM Katowice 2019. The record for most American players (16) is from MLG Columbus 2016, the first Major ever held in the United States. Twelve American players competed at ELEAGUE Boston, won by a Cloud9 roster consisting of entirely American players.

Joshua "JBa" Barutt, Jonathan "EliGE" Jablonowski, and Michael "Grim" Wince are all returning to the Major stage in Austin after competing in PW Shanghai. Ricky "floppy" Kemery is the only American player who competed at the PW Shanghai Major who isn't competing in Austin.

The full list of American players competing at the BLAST.tv Austin Major consists of:

Jonathan "EliGE" Jablonowski - FaZe
Michael "Swisher" Schmid - M80
Ethan "reck" Serrano - M80
Mason "Lake" Sanderson - M80
Michael "Grim" Wince - Complexity
Danny "Cxzi" Strzelczyk - Complexity
Nicholas "nicx" Lee - Complexity
Joshua "JBa" Barutt - Wildcard
Joshua "oSee" Ohm - NRG
Nicholas "nitr0" Cannella - NRG
Jeorge "Jeorge" Endicott - NRG