It looks like it’s happening – esports is about to get its very first professional league.
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Activision Blizzard announced the Overwatch League a little while back, promising to form together a number of teams to compete professionally in the game across a number of events. Today, first details about the League have begun to make the rounds, and it involves a lot of big names.
First up, there are seven cities that will be involved in the League, alongside a number of noteworthy founders. For instance, Boston is getting involved, and the founder of that particular team is none other than Robert Kraft, who also is the CEO of the New England Patriots. Other noteworthy names include Jeff Wilpon (who is the COO of the New York Mets) and Kevin Chou, who created the mobile gaming company Kabam. The full list (thus far) can be found below:
- Boston – Robert Kraft
- New York – Jeff Wilpon
- Los Angeles – Noah Whinston
- Miami-Orlando – Ben Spoont
- San Francisco – Andy Miller
- Shanghai – NetEase
- Seoul – Kevin Chou
The League is set to begin competition later this year, starting with the regular season, which will be hosted in Los Angeles. There are a number of home/away matches that will be set up for future seasons, similar to that of professional team match-ups, like in the NBA and NFL. In addition, revenue sharing will be a big focus for teams, as well as being able to generate a capped amount of local revenue, as well as monetization of amateur events per year and providing an advantage of up to 50 percent of the revenue from “fan items,” while the rest goes into a shared prize pool.
It all sounds very technical, but the fact of the matter is, Activision is very serious about making the Overwatch League a regular thing, just as it’s done with the Call of Duty World League in the past. Considering the game’s popularity, it should have no trouble shining in the esports arena, though how it’ll last in the long-term still has yet to be seen. We wish them luck!
Overwatch is available now for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC.
