Owl

[Nmkyungri]

Yesterday the OWL was announced with only 7 teams, which is not a good start to this biggest thing blizzard has ever done.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_hs1xhiC3M

Thorin has a great video for this

if you wanted a TLDW:

Basically OWL is a NA only league, all the owners aside from NETEASE who disbrutes OW in China have 0 impact outside of NA Kevin Chu who owns Seoul, never has touched a korean e-sport.

None of these sponsors are names we know other than NRG and NRG is a tier 4 team or 3 at best. Wheres the LGD's the IG's in China why didnt the two pwoerhouses bid for another spot in China, these teams own teams in every big e-sport.

Wheres the big Korean teams, your Samnung, Lunatic Hai, SK.Telecom theres so many more.

Wheres the big EU names, Fnatic, SK gaming, VP.

Blizzard is heading down a dark track, the fact is if the teams like envyus, rogue, Lunatic Hai, Kongdoo EUnited, C9 these teams at the moment are not in OWL so we could have a bunch of tier 3 teams while OGN with APEX actually has the best players? This could spell doom for blizzard, geolocation atm isn't enough


Theres no Chicago, no Texas, no Vegas, Chicago and Texas have at least 1-2 teams in most sports. Vegas is a huge market, Seattle is a huge market with Valve, Microsoft and other tech companies there. No NJ only 1 team in Ny when NY homes 2-3 teams in nearly every sport.

They need to release more teams or else this will fail.

[McFuu]

I don't know what you expect? Blizz wants this to be a professional league like the NBA/MLB. And is requiring teams to pay salaries among other normal professional sport league expectations. Lets not forget that when the other established leagues started life, they barely paid players, most used fields that were public or part of a school; there was no infrastructure or rules. Blizz isn't going to get 32 teams that are putting out massive amounts of money for youtube revenue streaming shares. The way they built the league, teams like Envyus, C9, etc... they don't have the capital to afford being apart of the league.
If Blizz wanted this to work, they'd front money to new franchise teams. To get these guys through the door, playing a season or 2, show investors that there is actually money to be made.

I'm not trying to question Blizz's business acumen, but from where I'm sitting and what I know about this "league" Blizz is dropping the ball big time. Videogames are largely unproven as a sports median. There are tournaments that have decent pay days, but those tournaments aren't making money, they are giant commercials for sponsors who are largely fronting the prize pool. While door fees are paying the operation costs. The majority of major leagues still occur online before off-line championships (if they even have them). And Overwatch isn't exactly the bell of the ball when it comes to esports.

This whole move feels forced, it always has.