BIG had a challenging start in 2024, going from being ranked 24th globally to being ranked 38th.
The three roster moves that occurred between February and May had a negative impact initially. The team suffered a lot of early eliminations at important competitions and seemed unable to beat any of the top teams.
At the end of Spring, BIG started to play a bit better and finished in the top eight at IEM Dallas 2024. With one exception, which occurred at DreamHack Atlanta, where they finished 2nd, BIG never managed to do better than 5th – 8th in the second half of this year, at least not in S-tier, A-tier, and B-tier tournaments.
Their performance was good enough to bring them back to a dignified top-20 position, but there’s still a long way to go to reach the top 10.
Now that 2024 is almost over, it seems that Johannes “tabseN” Wodarz and the rest of his squad have decided to bring in a slightly better player and set bigger goals for 2025.
RigoN’s Departure
When he first joined BIG, Rigon “rigoN” Gashi looked like a huge gamble because he had played for relatively small teams until that point. The most important of those teams was Bad News Eagles, which was created in February 2022 and disbanded in November 2023.
RigoN did achieve something spectacular with BNE, finishing 12th – 14th at two consecutive Majors: IEM Rio and BLAST.tv Paris. No doubt, it was these two results and his performance that convinced BIG to sign him. But now, just five months later, they seem to have changed their minds about his potential.
Or, at least, they’ve concluded that he’s not a good match for their playstyle and ambitions. It has to be said, however, that there have been quite a few cases when a team ended a player’s contract and then he went on to do great things.
Time will tell if rigoN will be one such example. For now, BIG needs to find a replacement for him and fast.
