2/29/2024 0 Comments Avast overwatch leagueThe pandemic squandered plans for international games on big teams’ home turf. The swap to Overwatch 2 fundamentally shook up the casual but core player base, many of whom were also the core fanbase for OWL, and changed the composition of every single professional team, forcing the second tank to become a sub rather than a starter. But a 2021 Grand Finals upset from the once 0-and-42 Shanghai Dragons led to a former Kotaku staffer getting a tattoo for the team, a testament to the passion of the league’s core fanbase.īut an inked-up and dedicated fanbase cannot sustain a league with a $US10 million buy-in ( Sports Business Journal reports that it dropped from the initial $US20 million, though it’s unclear when). Read More: Shady Numbers And Bad Business: Inside The Esports Bubbleįrom 2018 onward, the heart of the Overwatch League remained strong, even if ticket sales and viewership waxed and waned, and its format suffered from both organizational inconsistency and the side effects of the covid-19 pandemic (the league had to cancel all March and April events, and pre-season plans to host games in six different countries were thwarted). The Overwatch League Grand Finals 2018 were held at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center to a sell-out crowd DJ Khaled performed, though he later admitted he didn’t know it was a “gaming thing.” The London Spitfire bested the Philadelphia Fusion, winning the $US1 million grand prize. Despite the league’s city-based nature, all matches were held in the Blizzard Arena in Los Angeles, California, and for a brief time, those matches were sell-outs. The first week of the Overwatch League was an unequivocal success, with Activision Blizzard reporting that 10 million people tuned in to watch the matches through Twitch, MLG, and China-based streaming platforms. Franchise buy-ins were set at $US20 million, and big names like Robert Kraft (head of the Kraft group, which owns the New England Patriots) got involved. With a franchise-based model that was more NFL than CS:GO, it presented Overwatch players and fans with city-centered teams that ostensibly would help foster more traditional sports allegiances (I myself blindly supported the New York Excelsior, simply because they were based in my home state). Six years ago, the Overwatch League burst onto the esports scene with all the bombasity and boldness of an already well-established sports competition. The Overwatch League as we know it is dead, and last night felt like its tearful eulogy. The vote has yet to happen, but an air lingered over Sunday’s 2023 OWL Grand Finals as if it already had. As such, it fired 50 employees back in June of this year, and announced that, at the end of the 2023 season, it would give the current teams a chance to vote on whether or not they’d like to continue participating in the league as-is or accept a $US6 million buyout. In recent months, Blizzard has reported that numbers for the Overwatch 2-based global competition, from viewership to revenue, have been dwindling.
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