What does Overwatch League’s first Homestand Weekend tell us about league’s future? (2024)

“The vision of the future of the league looks like this.”

Mike Rufail is the principal owner and CEO of Team Envy. Thiswas an international tournament which sold out a capacity crowd of 4,500 people on Saturday and Sunday, April 27 and 28 at the Allen Events Center, 30 minutes northeast of Downtown Dallas. The league is the Overwatch League, which features 20 teams competing in Blizzard’s hit first-person shooter game. His vision is ambitious.

“Hopefully we can keep building on this and take this crowd from 5,000 to 20,000 attendees per game,” Rufail said. “I think the future is gonna be bright for a lot of the teams here in their own markets. I think fans are gonna be willing to show up all over the world in all these different cities that have teams.”

That’s an ambitious goal. It’s hard to fault Rufail for his optimism after the weekend, which served as a bellwether for the league’s long-term fate. The league’s localized model is its differentiating mechanism; low attendance and poor planning could have created serious doubt. The league’s commissioner, Nate Nanzer, liked what he saw.

“At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if it’s football, baseball, basketball, hockey or Overwatch. It’s competition, it’s a game, and people like watching it,” Nanzer said. “There are millions of gamers around the world who want to engage with this content and connect to other gamers. It couldn’t have been a better start, and I can’t wait to see how we continue on with this for years to come.”

Team Envy’s Dallas Fuel franchise was a natural choice to host the league’s first Homestand Weekend. They may be the most popular team, and are regarded as the best-marketed squad. They also have a natural rival within driving distance, the Houston Outlaws. Dallas defeated Houston 3-1 Sunday in the weekend’s final bout.

“I was pretty confident it would sell out,” said Mathew Taylor, the Fuel’s general manager. “People are traveling hours upon hours to come to L.A. and see us play right now. People have gotten flights from Korea. As passionate as Texas fans are, I wasn’t surprised at all.”

Tickets were priced between $35-145 for a single day, though event sponsor Gamestop gave away tickets to any customers who purchased items at its store near the Allen Events Center.

The events center was a madhouse, particularly when its home team took the stage. The Athletic’s own Bob Sturm was in attendance with his sons, and it’s safe to say he was suitably impressed.

This is bonkers. #BurnBlue pic.twitter.com/MJiWPw9Git

— Bob Sturm (@SportsSturm) April 28, 2019

14-year-old Brett Sturm is looking forward to seeing more of the Fuel. “I would love to go once a month for sure. It was great. Scale of 1-10, a strong 9.”

It’s also important to contextualize what the weekend actually means for the league’s long-term success. The Overwatch League is in its second year, and all matches beside those played this weekend have taken place in Los Angeles. Teams will begin hosting home matches — and traveling for away matches — next season, and that will require steady, week-to-week attendance, something fledgling teams in any league tend to struggle with, much less a new league.

“It’s kind of like traditional sports. People won’t show up when teams are bad unless they’re in a market where they would show up for games anyway,” said Rod Breslau (@Slasher), an esports consultant and journalist. “I definitely doubt other franchises not named the Dallas Fuel, NY Excel (Excelsior) or the LA Valiant — the more popular of the LA teams — could make this event happen all the time. I think the Fuel definitely has one of the best chances of doing this.”

Breslau isn’t alone. An esports executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity agreed.

“One big, historic home opening weekend is not the same thing as week-in, week out. They’ll have markets that have zero history running an esports organization; some of them have zero history running a sports organization. I think we’re gonna see them not do well.”

Taylor said the Fuel has hosted over 1,000 fans for a watch party at the Main Event bowling alley. Team officials are expecting a lot of demand for home tickets next year, indicating Arlington’s $10 million esports stadium likely won’t have the capacity to host their home games on a regular basis. However, there is a big difference between drawing a huge crowd on a one-off basis and doing it week in, week out. That’s especially true for a team that, to date, has been seen as an underachiever relative to its talent and expectations. Still, as far as first impressions go, this weekend is about as good as it gets. The Fuel figure to be in good shape. Whether that extends to the rest of the league remains in question

Blizzard does not release many metrics to the public, but one way many in the industry track a game’s popularity is through Twitch viewership. According to TwitchTracker, the game averaged 39,710 viewers this April, with nearly 28.6 million hours of play watched. That’s a significant increase from December 2018 (22,705 average viewers) but slightly behind the all-time high recorded in January 2018 (43,283). While viewership held steady or decreased through last year’s inaugural season, however, the last five months have all seen steady growth.

After the publication of this article, a Blizzard public relations official indicated through an email that Overwatch League hours watched are up over 30% year to year.

Breslau says whatever criticisms the game draws, it’s hard to fault OWL management.

“I am very impressed with how the league itself has been able to make all this money. League of Legends has way more viewers, way more of an international audience, it’s a game that’s been around longer, and yet their sales team is generally pretty f*cking garbage. Everything they (Overwatch League) have done in that respect is really, really impressive.”

Video game popularity follows an inevitable cycle. New games catch on, ascend for a variable amount of time, then begin their decline phase. The best games have a long ascent, hold their peak, and age gracefully. Nanzer is confident that publisher Activision Blizzard can back up its track record of longevity.

“Starcraft came out in 1998; still one of the top esports in the world. The Warcraft franchise is having its 20th anniversary. Diablo. We know how to make lasting franchises. I don’t think Overwatch is any different. It’s our youngest franchise, but I think we’ve proven in our history that we know how to make that formula of a successful franchise over time.”

Breslau, however, sees signs of trouble.

“The issue for me is the game has been floundering and had problems for what feels like forever now,” he said. “Blizzard not making any changes for, like, nine months is ridiculous. It’s unbelievable that we had to wait that long to make any changes. It’s not even like, ‘Can players adapt.’ Players are playing the same things all the time because Blizzard won’t make any changes. The reason why I complain all the time is that Overwatch has been kinda figured out since the start of the game. League of Legends and DOTA have over 100 heroes. Overwatch has 33 heroes, and when the game came out they had 21. So people quickly figured out the best composition.”

The league also has a logistical issue on its hands. There are teams on North America’s West Coast, East Coast and Texas. They are joined by a franchise in both London and Paris, four in China and one in Korea.

“It’s never been done,” an industry source said. “Even in traditional sports, it hasn’t ever been done. Yes, you have cross-national competitions, those are generally divided by region. OWL might have three regions; I don’t know exactly how it’s going to happen. But you’re talking about players who are not used to traveling at all, and they now have to travel more than any traditional sports team in the world.”

Rufail knows it won’t be easy, but he remains optimistic.

“We’re just gonna have to make sure we give our team good travel accommodations, give them good hotels to stay in, make sure that our staff is available to them for anything they may need on the road… We’re still working those details out, too, on how we can make things easier for the players.”

There are plenty of reasons to remain positive about OWL’s prospects. Blizzard’s track record is very strong, and even the game’s critics will concede things are looking up.

“The slight good news is they made somewhat of a significant change to the game, and that’s giving positive support to the community,” Breslau said. “I’m a big believer in everything they’ve done business-wise, and they’re finally starting to make some progress. Overwatch and Overwatch League is kind of in a too-big-to-fail phase right now. Blizzard and all the owners have put in so much money, they’ll do whatever it takes to make sure the game is still here by 2030 or 2040.”

Organizers seem to have found a winning formula for live events as well. The crowd was animated, invested and seemingly well-informed, with many fans wielding signs and donning jerseys. Impassioned chants for various teams broke through the general fanfare throughout the weekend.

“The demographic is crazy. The coolest part I’ll say about esports fans is that you’re seeing kids bring their parents,” Taylor said. “That community, the fact that it’s very artistic and there’s a lot of cool cosplay that goes on, it’s great.”

“The thing about the video game industry is that it’s about constant iteration and evolution,” Nanzer said. “The game will change over time, and the league will change over time as well. We’ve only been doing this for a year and a half, and we’ve already made multiple changes as far as the number of games, the format, the playoff format.”

Nanzer and the league’s fans can only hope that evolution stays ahead of the natural Darwinism evident in the video game industry.

(Top photo: Or Moyal)