Overwatch League
The Overwatch League was a professional esports league for the video game Overwatch and its sequel Overwatch 2, produced by its developer, Blizzard Entertainment. From 2018 to 2023, the Overwatch League followed the model of other traditional North American professional sporting leagues by using a set of permanent, city-based teams backed by separate ownership groups. The league used the regular season and playoffs format rather than promotion and relegation used commonly in other esports and non-North American leagues, with players on the roster being assured a minimum annual salary, benefits, and a portion of winnings and revenue-sharing based on team performance.
The Overwatch League was announced in 2016 and secured commitments from 12 teams across the United States, Europe, and Asia, each investing $20million in franchise fees, to participate in its 2018 inaugural season. The league faced skeptics who questioned its potential success due to the lack of a proven concept and a game without a substantial esports history. For the following season, the Overwatch League brought in eight new franchises, each investing between$35 million to $60million.
In 2020, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic led to widespread disruptions and forced the league to abandon its original homestand model and shift to an online format, where teams competed remotely from their respective regions. While the suspension of in-person events provided a temporary solution, it also raised concerns about its financial viability. However, some team owners noted that not having live events allowed them to mitigate financial losses that they would have otherwise incurred. During the 2021 season, in the wake of a lawsuit filed against Activision Blizzard, nearly all of the league's sponsors withdrew their support from the league.
In November 2022, a broken partnership with NetEase and Blizzard resulted in access to Overwatch 2 being suspended in China. As a result, the league allowed Overwatch Contenders teams to compete in its Eastern Region for the following season, and the league saw its first team leave, as the Chengdu Hunters dissolved. In January 2023, Overwatch League teams collectively initiated a collective bargaining process, which resulted in the Overwatch League agreeing to waive all outstanding franchise fees. By November 2023, Blizzard had announced that Overwatch esports was "transitioning" from the Overwatch League into a more traditional esports structure for the title, which would become the Overwatch Champions Series in 2024.
Format
The Overwatch League was owned by Blizzard Entertainment and run by Major League Gaming, which is also owned by Blizzard's parent company Activision Blizzard. The Overwatch League played out similar to most North American professional sports leagues, in which all teams played scheduled games against other teams to vie for position in the season's playoffs, rather than the approach of team promotion and relegation more commonly used in other esports leagues. The league featured twenty teams split between two conferences based on their location: East and West. The East had eight teams, while the West had twelve.The 2018 season consisted of non-regulation pre-season play, a regular season divided into four stages, and a post-season playoffs tournament to determine the championship team for the season. Each regular season stage lasted five weeks, with each stage ending with a short playoff of the top teams based on that stage's records to determine stage champions. Teams played 40 matches across the regular season, playing teams both within and outside their division. The post-season playoffs used teams' overall standings across all stages. The top standing team in both divisions received the top two seed in the playoffs, followed by a fixed number of teams determined from across both divisions. An All-Star weekend is also held, featuring two division-based teams selected by league representatives and voted on by fans.
The 2019 season format was similar to that of the previous season, though stage playoffs for the fourth stage were eliminated and the number of matches was decreased to 28, among [|other changes]. The 2020 season introduced a number of changes, including a home-and-away format, where each team would host home games with up to eight teams per homestand event, and the elimination of the stage format. This format was eventually changed to a bimonthly tournament-based season in April due to the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Teams are awarded with monetary prizes for how they place at the end of the regular season, as well as for participating and placing high in the stage playoffs and post-season tournament. For example, the first season had a total prize pool of available, with the top prize of $1 million awarded to the post-season championship team.
Rules
Overwatch is a five-versus-five team-based first-person shooter video game. Broadly, the goal is to work with team members to eliminate or repel opponents while attacking, defending, or competing for an objective. Players select from the game's roster of thirty-three heroes, split between classes of Damage, Support, and Tank each with their own pre-designed set of weapons and skill kits, though each player on a team must play a unique hero. Starting with stage four of the 2019 season, each team must be composed of two Damage heroes, two Supports, and two Tanks. A player can switch to an available hero within the same class if they are eliminated prior to respawning, or if they return to their current spawn point, which allows for teams to adjust their composition dynamically based on the current situation.Within league play, a regular season match featured two teams playing a best-of-five format, with each map featuring a predetermined map type, following the same gameplay format as with normal competitive mode in Overwatch: Control maps, played on a best-of-three rounds, and Assault, Escort, and Hybrid maps, with each team having at least one chance as the attacking team. The pool of specific maps from the standard Overwatch rotation were determined periodically, allowing the teams to determine their player lineups and strategy while also changing the season's metagame. A team may have called in substitutes for players only between maps. The team that won three maps first won the match. If teams are tied after four games, a tiebreaker game played on a Control map was used to break the tie and determine the match winner. Standings were based primarily on the overall match win–loss record, but ties were broken based on the total map win–loss record. Any further ties for tournament placement were broken based first on the head-to-head game win–loss record, then head-to-head match count.
Overwatch League games were played on a custom server controlled by Blizzard; this server is also available to players for practices. This version of the game received similar updates to the main commercial game, adding new maps and heroes, and altering the various hero abilities based on testing within the Public Test Realm. However, these updates were not applied immediately as they are for the commercial game, but instead no more frequent than once every six weeks. For example, a late January 2018 patch, which had significant effects on characters like Mercy and thus had potential to upset the metagame, was not applied to the league server until mid-February, at the start of the second stage. However, teams were given access to private servers updated to alongside the main release of Overwatch for them to practice and scrimmage against other teams to learn and develop strategies on updates and patches before experiencing them in official matches. For matches, each player was provided with an identical desktop computer, monitor, and pair of noise-cancelling headphones to play on to eliminate any handicaps related to computational or graphics processing, but players may have used their preferred keyboard and mouse.
Player eligibility and benefits
While Overwatch is played in teams of five, Overwatch League teams could have had up to six additional players that could be swapped between maps. A team's membership was locked at the start of the season, but a mid-season signing period allowed teams to bring in new players or trade players between teams. Following the end of the season, teams had about one month to extend current player contracts, bring on players from affiliated Overwatch Contenders teams, or hold private tryout sessions. Subsequently, all unsigned players by the end of this period entered free agency during which players could negotiate with teams to become part of the roster; in the case of when expansion teams were added, there was a month-long period where expansion teams had exclusive negotiating rights before other teams can engage. A team's minimum roster was to be set prior to the season's pre-season matches, about two months prior to season play, but they could expand and change this roster up until a specified date. The league was not region-locked, so teams could use players of any nationality to fill their ranks, as long as the team ownership was based in that city or region. For example, the London Spitfire at the onset of the first season was entirely made up of South Korean players. The only restriction on players is to be of at least 17 years old and to be able to travel internationally.Overwatch League players, while on a team's contract, were paid an annual salary. As of the 2023 season, a player's salary was a minimum of set by the league. Additionally, the league offered players with health and retirement benefits, as well as housing and training support. Blizzard required team owners to provide the signed players with bonuses representing at least 50% of the team's winnings and revenue. Players could negotiate for larger amounts with their team's owners and larger portion of the bonus revenue-sharing from tournament winnings and other income. For example, in 2017, Jay "sinatraa" Won secured the league's highest salary of $150,000 for his spot on the San Francisco Shock, along with a 50% share of the team's bonuses.
Players were expected to follow a code of conduct set by Blizzard while playing and representing the league, and may have face suspension and fines for violating these, in addition to any penalties the team itself may impose. A noted incident shortly after the league's launch saw Dallas Fuel's Félix "xQc" Lengyel suspended by the league for four games and fined $2,000 for making homophobic comments about another player; the Fuel further suspended him for the remainder of the first stage of play. Following additional conduct violations in the second stage that led to further suspension, xQc was released by the Fuel. Blizzard has since started its online "discipline tracker" in December 2018 to list players who have been temporarily suspended or fined for actions related to their behavior as representatives of the Overwatch League. Players, as part of their benefits, received media training to help with speaking to the press and public about their roles, an issue that has been a problem in previous organized esport systems.