Astralis and RFRSH officially split

While the news broke in mid-July, the transaction was only finalised today. The teams split off into a temporary company called 'RFRSH Teams' initially, but RFRSH no longer formally owns the Astralis Group, however the two companies continue to share offices and staff until everything is set up and able to run independently. Nikolaj Nyholm assured the separation would be complete by the StarLadder Major in Berlin later this month.

Controversy has surrounded RFRSH running the BLAST Pro Series events while also owning the Astralis team. During their period of dominance in 2018, Astralis appeared to be skipping events in favour of multiple BLAST tourneys. Halfway through the year, the Danish powerhouse had only played five best-of-threes in the three months following the IEM Katowice Major due to BLAST formats being predominantly best-of-ones.

Since this absence, Astralis has fallen from the top spot dramatically and despite remaining #3 on the HLTV.org rankings, the team has been a shadow of its former self in recent months. It is unknown whether the new, independent Astralis will keep their old support network including sports psychologists, hire new people or simply go without. The same goes for bootcamp and training facilities previously provided by RFRSH.

RFRSH acquired the Origen brand when they were awarded an LEC franchise spot back in November 2018. The team finished second in the LEC Spring playoffs, losing out only to a dominant G2 Esports in the Final. The controversy has seemingly avoided Origen in their relationship with RFRSH, but the split will also see them separate from the company.

The split comes as BLAST Pro Series cancelled the Lisbon stop in the 2019 Season due to a miscalculation. Each team was meant to play five events, but this number has been cut to four to give all teams an equal chance to quality for the Global Final.