Stage one of the Overwatch League kicks into gear today with the first round of matches between the top competitors in Blizzard’s hero shooter. If you’re looking to join in on the action, Blizzard will be streaming the event from on both Twitch and MLG. We’ve got the full schedule for matches available here, so you can easily keep track of your favorite sides’ matches. If you haven’t decided on a team to support, or you’re a complete newbie to competitive Overwatch, don’t worry, in this article we’ve got everything you need to know about the Overwatch League.
What is it?
The Overwatch League pits 12 of the most talented teams against each other to compete over for their stake in a $3.5 million prize pool. Stage One takes place over six weeks, with a final playoffs prize of $125,000, alongside rewards for team rankings. Teams will rotate through matches each week until all sides have played one another. Matches contain at least four games, with a tiebreaker round if scores are equal. The map-dependent game modes can include payload, assault, control point and hybrid modes. After five weeks of league matches, the top four sides will compete in two title matches to determine the final standings.
Teams competing in the league have a mixture of backings from traditional esports organisations like Cloud9, to big name sports team owners like Jeff Wilpon (COO of the New York Mets baseball team) who owns the side New York Excelsior. Players who compete in the league are guaranteed a minimum salary of $50,000.
When to watch
The Overwatch league’s first match is scheduled to start Wednesday 4pm PT (that’s 7pm ET, or 1am CET — sorry Europeans). The opening match will be between San Francisco Shock and Los Angeles Valiant, but you can expect the stream to start up between 30 minutes to an hour beforehand for opening chat and analysis.
For the debut season, every match will be hosted in the Blizzard Arena Los Angeles (there are still tickets available for those who’d like to attend), and Blizzard will be running three matches every Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday for five weeks. The match times vary between weeks, but you can typically expect matches to be on roughly between 2-10pm weekdays, and 11-5pm weekends. Again, the full schedule for Stage One is here.
Where to watch
With the preseason only shown on MLG, Blizzard had left everyone just a little bit confused as to where we’d be watching the first season of the Overwatch League. Fortunately, that’s all been cleared up with the announcement of a two-year Twitch partnership.
The first season will be broadcast on both MLG and Twitch. You can find the English channels for each here and here, respectively. Twitch will also host French and Korean streams.
What to expect
Overwatch is a fast-paced and chaotic game, and the main complaint regarding it as an esport has been just how difficult it can be to keep track of the action. Fortunately, Blizzard has been hard at work introducing tools and camera perspectives to help clear things up. It’s still far from perfect, but top down views, color-identifiable team kits/effects and carefully chosen angles should help everything flow more smoothly. The more experience both casters and observers get during the league, the more we can expect this to improve, too.
From what we’ve seen so far, you can expect the camera to follow DPS characters like Tracer, Bastion and Widowmaker the majority of the time. Unfortunately this gives little chance to really appreciate the important support and tank plays that can help win a match, but it does ensure the liveliest shots are caught on camera. Instant replay tech allows us to jump back and see how a team pulled off spectacular combos, too, so don’t worry if the camera misses something big the first time. Blizzard have pumped an awful lot of money into the league, meaning the production quality should be top notch.
In terms of expectations, South Korea are the reigning champions of Overwatch, making teams like Seoul Dynasty, London Spitfire and New York Excelsior the ones to beat. North America has a few big contenders, but Dallas Fuel are the side with high hopes for success. We’ve got the full lineup for each team along our thoughts on their chances on the next page.
The teams
The twelve teams in competition take their names from states and cities across the globe, though these don’t necessarily correlate to the players on the roster. The first stage of the league will all take place in LA, but later stages intend to host events at the home cities of each other teams. While Overwatch is a six vs six game, teams are allowed up to 12 players they can swap out between matches. Below you'll find the full team rosters, along with information on each side and their chances in the league.
Boston Uprising
With one of the most prestigious sponsorships in the scene, Boston Uprising are owned by Robert and Jonathan Kraft of the New England Patriots. The team name is credited to the role of the city during the American Revolution. Few had high expectations of the team coming into the preseason, where they surprised most by performing pretty well overall, even besting Shanghai Dragons.
Roster:
Roster: DreamKazper (Jonathan Sanchez)
Snow (Mikias Yohannes)
Gamsu (YoungJin Noh)
NotE (Lucas Meissner)
Neko (SeHyun Park)
Avast (Connor Prince)
STRIKER (Namju Gwon)
Kalios (WooYul Shin)
Mistakes (Stanislav Danilov)
Kellex (Kristian Keller)
Dallas Fuel
America’s real hope for success, Dallas Fuel is a roster rammed with talent, but with a dangerous habit for causing controversy. Players xQc and Taimou have already landed themselves in trouble with Blizzard for poor behaviour. Owned by Team EnVyUs, the side has also attracted former TF2 pro, Seagull who will be one to watch in the matches ahead. If they can keep their talent in line, Dallas Fuel could be the best chance American has to upset the Korean teams.
Roster:
Chipshajen (Sebastian Widlund)
HarryHook (Jonathan Tejedor Rua)
Mickie (Pongphop Rattanasangchod)
xQc (Félix Lengyel)
Seagull (Brandon Larned)
Taimou (Timo Kettunen)
Custa (Scott Kennedy)
cocco (Christian Jonsson)
EFFECT (Hyeon Hwang)
Florida Mayhem
Despite taking its name from the USA’s eastern coast state, Florida Mayhem is a mostly Swedish roster, formed of most of the players from Sweden’s Overwatch World Cup team. With only six members signed, Florida Mayhem struggled during the preseason and are likely one of the weakest sides in the competition. However, with time to recoup and learn from their losses, Florida will be taking the underdog role and have every chance to improve and cause upsets during the main competition.
Roster:
Manneten (Tim Bylund)
Logix (Andreas Berghmans)
Zebbosai (Sebastian Olsson)
CWoosH (Johan Klingestedt)
TviQ (Kevin Lindström)
Zuppeh (Aleksi Kuntsi)
Houston Outlaws
The Outlaws ended the preseason 0-2, but the poor tally belies their impressive performance against two of the best teams in competition. Owned by Optic Gaming, the Houston Outlaws will be looking to assert themselves in the main league as an all-american powerhouse. Three of the core roster have already competed under the USA banner in the Overwatch World Cup where they were bested by South Korea, making this the perfect chance for revenge.
Roster:
Muma (Austin Wilmot)
Bani (Christopher Benell)
Clockwork (Matthew Dias)
Mendokusaii (Lucas Håkansson)
Boink (Daniel Pence)
LiNkzr (Jiri Masalin)
SPREE (Alexandre Vanhomwegen)
Rawkus (Shane Flaherty)
Jake (Jake Lyon)
Coolmatt (Matt Iorio)
London Spitfire
Despite taking inspiration from the rainy streets of London, Spitfire are a fully Korean side (with owners from California, naturally) formed from two of the strongest pre-season teams, GC Busan and KongDoo Panthera. Despite high hopes, Spitfire stumbled somewhat in the preseason, blaming miscommunication and incorrect player choices for their losses. Despite this, they are by far one of the deadliest lineups taking part, and one of the biggest rivals to their compatriots, Seoul Dynasty. They also clearly have the best logo of all the teams, making them an easy team to support.
Roster:
Gesture (Jae-Hui Hong)
birdring (Ji-Kyeok Kim)
Fissure (Chan-Hyung Baek)
Bdosin (Seung-Tae Choi)
NUS (Jong-Seok Kim)
Hooreg (Dong-Eun Lee)
Rascal (Dong-Jun Kim)
Fury (Jun-Ho Kim)
HaGoPeun (Hyeon-Woo Jo)
WooHyaL (Seung-Hyun Seong)
Profit (Jun-Young Park)
Closer (Won-Sik Jung)
Los Angeles Gladiators
LA’s first team combines a selection of diffirent talents, including Canadian Lane ‘Surefour’ Roberts who helped push his side to the 2017 Overwatch World Cup grand finals. A DPS player with pinpoint aim, expect the camera to follow him closely during matches. The Gladiators are also home to Aaron ‘Bischu’ Kim, a former League of Legends player who’ll be looking to demonstrate his talents have transferred well. Unfortunately they only managed to go even in the preseason, falling down to their LA rivals, Valiant, after a shock victory against London Spitfire.
Roster:
Asher (Jun-Sung Choi)
Surefour (Lane Roberts)
iRemiix (Luis Galarza Figueroa)
Bischu (Aaron Kim)
Shaz (Jonas Samuel Suovaara)
Hydration (Joao Pedro Veloso de Goes Telles)
BigGoose (Benjamin Ville Aapeli Isohanni)
Los Angeles Valiant
Immortals owned Valiant had a strong preseason, besting both Gladiators, their LA rivals, and San Francisco Shock. They’re up against the latter again on the opening day and will be eager to repeat the performance. For the main season Valiant will have access to DPS player Brady ‘Agilities’ Girardi, who turned 18 during December (players must be 18 years of age or older to compete in the season). With a potentially stronger roster than they had in their impressive preseason performance, Valiant could be an unsuspecting threat to the bigger names as we enter week one.
Roster:
Silkthread (Ted Wang)
Grimreality (Christopher Schaefer)
Kariv (Young-Seo Park)
Fate (Pan-Seung Koo)
Verbo (Stefano Disalvo)
Envy (Kang-Jae Lee)
Space (Indy Halpern)
Numlocked (Sebastian Barton)
Unkoe (Benjamin Chevasson)
Agilities (Brady Girardi)
Soon (Terence Tarlier)
New York Excelsior
Owned by Jeff Wilpon of the New York Mets, New York Excelsior signed a South Korean roster in hopes to challenge the best of the best. Most interesting, Excelsior snapped up Yeon-oh ‘Flow3R’ Hwang, a player currently too young to compete. He’ll turn 18 in May, meaning we might see a big changeup in the team’s approach and success in later stages of the league. A threatening roster already, Excelsior are only expected to improve by adding a player of his versatility. Facing off against Boston Uprising day one, Excelsior are the clear favorites and will want to make an example of their opposition in a powerful opening. Seoul Dynasty are their real targets, who outclassed them in their preseason face-off.
Roster:
Saebyeolbe (Jong-Ryeol Park)
Meko (Tae-Hong Kim)
Pine (Do-Hyeon Kim)
Janus (Jun-Hwa Song)
Jjonak (Seong-Hyun Bang)
Mano (Dong-Gyu Kim)
Libero (Hae-Seong Kim)
Ark (Yeon-Jun Hong)
Philadelphia Fusion
As the only team to completely drop out of the preseason, Philadelphia Fusion are a bit of an unknown factor coming into the first week. With a team comprising over 10 nationalities, we’re interested to see if communication presents any issues. The team has been troubled further since Su-min ‘Sado’ Kim was caught boosting(levelling up other player’s accounts for money) and received a suspension. With no showcase for their capabilities, we’ll have to wait and see what Fusion can bring when they take on the popular Houston Outlaws on Thursday.
Roster:
Joemeister (Joseph Gramano)
Boombox (Isaac Charles)
Carpe (Jae-Hyeok Lee)
Snillo (Simon Ekström)
fragi (Joona Laine)
Eqo (Josue Corona)
ShaDowBurn (Georgii Gushcha)
Neptuno (Alberto González Molinillo)
DayFly (Jeong-Hwan Park)
Hotba (Hong-Jun Choi)
Poko (Gael Gouzerch)
SADO (Su-Min Kim)
San Francisco Shock
San Fran’s team drew eyes on two occasions last year, though neither related to team or player performances. Following the trend of sports organisation involvement, San Francisco Shock have received significant investment from none other than Shaquille O’Neal (as well as Marshawn Lynch and J. Lo), making them the team with the largest celebrity backing. League salaries might net you $50k, but Shock’s DPS star Jay ‘sinatraa’ Won proved so hotly contested that he ended up negotiating a salary of $150k from the org. The downside? He won’t be able to compete until he turns 18 in March. San Fran Shock performed well in the preseason, thanks in no small part to the excellent Andrej ‘BABYBAY’ Francisty. They’ll be taking on Valiant in their first match after losing to them in the preseason, meaning they’ll be up against a challenge, but with a strong desire for vengeance.
Roster:
super (Matthew DeLisi)
BABYBAY (Andrej Francisty)
sinatraa (Jay Won)
sleepy (Nikola Andrews)
Danteh (Dante Cruz)
dhaK (Daniel Martinez Paz)
Nomy (David Lizarraga Ramirez Osmar)
iddqd (André Dahlström)
Nevix (Andreas Karlsson)
Seoul Dynasty
Formed out of the former Lunatic-Hai roster, Seoul Dynasty are the current kings of the competition, and the side that every team will be looking to overcome. The team’s excellent coordination led to a perfect,. 3-0 run in the preseason, outperforming Shanghai, Houston and New York. Three of the team have already proven their worth by winning the Overwatch World Cup, and the full squad comfortably established themselves at the best in the world on Lunatic-Hai. Seoul Dynasty are ready to take on any and all pretenders to their throne.
Roster:
Bunny (Jun-Hyeok Chae)
Miro (Jin-Hyuk Gong)
XepheR (Jae-Mo Koo)
gido (Gi-Do Moon)
Wekeed (Seok-Woo Choi)
Munchkin (Sang-Beom Byun)
ZUNBA (Joon-Hyeok Kim)
KuKi (Dae-Kuk Kim)
tobi (Jin-Mo Yang)
ryujehong (Je-Hong Ryu)
FLETA (Byung-Sun Kim)
Shanghai Dragons
Pulling together the finest Chinese Overwatch players about, the Dragons looked to be real contenders in the league before floundering during the preseason. The team had little chance to practice, forming only shortly before the preseason began, so we’re hopeful the side will look a fair bit stronger in the main league. This week will give us a good chance to see how the Chinese force have improved with a month of training.
Roster:
Freefeel (Peixuan Xu)
Xushu (Junjie Liu)
Fiveking (Zhaoyu Chen)
Altering (Yage Cheng)
Undead (Chao Fang)
MG (Dongjian Wu)
Roshan (Wenhao Jing)
Diya (Weida Lu)