Esports league starts strong on ambitious global schedule
NEW YORK» They stood, they cheered, they booed and they boozed. Turns out, esports fans in New York aren’t much different from their traditional sports counterparts.
Packing a nearly 2,000-seat venue across the street from Madison Square Garden, those supporters validated the theory behind the Overwatch League’s ambitious global vision.
“This event is everything we could have hoped for,” said Jon Spector, vice president of the competitive video game circuit.
The OWL opened its third season in February with matches hosted by franchises in New York and Dallas, and everything about the sold-out shows looked like a payoff on its wager that a worldwide, city-based structure could propel it to the top of a blossoming industry.
Those festivities were the first of 52 scheduled events on the home-and-away calendar that will bring competitions to 20 arenas spanning Europe, North
America and Asia. No professional league — esports or otherwise — has taken on such an arduous regular-season schedule.
While many fans are concerned about the welfare of the players — some are still teenagers — the league believes it has taken appropriate actions to prevent burnout for the stars of its 6 vs. 6, first-person shooter computer game, who earn more than $100,000 per season on average.
Of course, the OWL still readily admits this globe-trotting adventure is an ongoing experiment. “All 52 won’t be perfect,” Spector said.
At the Hammerstein Ballroom in Midtown Manhattan, the endeavor’s upside was apparent. Fans spent more than $100 for two-day passes and came out in force for doubleheader matches. Four teams — New York, Boston, London and Paris — took turns squaring off, and fans had the venue nearly filled even for the undercards.
It felt like a typical, rowdy sports crowd — decked out in team gear from the on-site merchandise stand, waiting in line for pizza and beer during lulls in the action, and ruthlessly jeering the rival Boston Uprising at every opportunity.
“The audience has always been here,” said Farzam Kamel, cofounder and president of Andbox, which manages the New York Excelsior.
Blizzard Entertainment hoped exactly that when it sought to give the global esports phenomenon a geographic twist.
After hosting nearly all its matches in seasons one and two at a facility near Los Angeles, Blizzard is starting its city-based experiment in earnest this year. Each franchise is set to host two to five weekends of competition during a 26-week regular season that runs through early August.
It’s coming just in time for a league lagging behind competitors in total viewers. OWL’s Grand Finals averaged 1.12 million viewers globally in 2019 — far behind the 21.8 million average audience for the League of Legends World Championship, according to Nielsen. By comparison, Game 7 of last year’s World Series averaged 23.2 million viewers in the U.S.
There has already been a major complicating wrinkle, too. Early season matches in the OWL’s four Chinese cities had to be postponed because of the coronavirus outbreak.
Blizzard is launching a similar global schedule with its firstyear Call of Duty League, and it anticipates learning quite a bit between the two circuits.
If the gamers can show it’s possible, high-profile leagues such as the NFL, NBA and others might borrow from their playbook as they follow suit.
“I’ve been saying this is sort of the starting line for us,” commissioner Pete Vlastelica said.