Everything you need to know about Blizzard's 'Overwatch' League (2024)

LOS ANGELES -- Blizzard is creating the Overwatch League, a global, professional league that is taking quite a few pages out of traditional sports' book.

Revealed at BlizzCon Friday, the Overwatch League is aiming to inject Overwatch teams into cities around the world, host a combine for players to try out for different cities' teams, give players contracts with compensation and benefits, and bring top-level LAN matches to the masses. It's launching in 2017.

In Blizzard's new Overwatch League, teams will represent major cities in the Americas, Europe, China, South Korea and Asia Pacific, similar to how traditional sports leagues have teams tied to cities like the Chicago Cubs or the Atlanta Hawks. In 2017, competitive Overwatch fans could be sporting jerseys emblazoned with names like the Washington Winstons, the Carolina Reapers or the Omaha Omnics.

Currently, most teams in esports are not representative of specific cities or countries. Some teams are made up of players from the same region, like Virtus.pro's Polish Counter-Strike: Global Offensive roster, but they could theoretically dump the whole squad and pick up players from different countries and lose their Polish fan base. The Overwatch League is specifically looking to give teams local fan bases.

These teams will compete in a standard format with in-person LAN matches around the globe from the regular season to the playoff finals, fighting to be crowned the best Overwatch team in the world.

To get into the Overwatch League, players who have already proven themselves in the competitive scene will be invited to show off their skills at a combine set up by Blizzard, similar to how the NFL holds a combine for prospective professional football players.

"Players at the combine will be evaluated across a range of tests, giving teams the opportunity to sign those who best round out their rosters," Blizzard said in an email release. "Anyone picked up by a team during the signing period will be guaranteed a contract that includes a baseline minimum salary and benefits package."

These kind of player guarantees are absent from most other esports leagues. The newly formed Professional Esports Association is aiming to bring similar payments and benefits to Counter-Strike players in the United States. The PEA specifically formed in response to first-party and third-party leagues not guaranteeing these things.

Although Blizzard is setting up the Overwatch League, they will not own the teams. When the league was first teased (possibly accidentally) by Activision-Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick in late October, Kotick mentioned that the teams in it "will be a combination of professional sports teams as owners and endemic sports teams as owners."

Existing professional sports teams have recently begun entering the world of esports, including the Philadelphia 76ers acquiring Team Dignitas and Apex in September and Boston Celtics player Jonas Jerebko acquiring Renegades.

Overwatch as an esport has been growing at a very fast rate, seeing multiple international tournaments with six-figure prize pools just months after the game released. ELeague's $300,000 Overwatch Open grand finals were broadcast on TBS in October and surpassed ELeague's CS:GO matches broadcast on the same channel.

Blizzard's first foray into Overwatch esports is the Overwatch World Cup, which has seen viewer numbers in the hundreds of thousands on Twitch and will be concluding at BlizzCon on Saturday.

More information about the Overwatch League will be revealed in the coming months.