After six years of existence, Blizzard has confirmed that it will end its biggest esports project - the Overwatch League.
The Overwatch League was one of the first major franchise competitions in esports, a competition in which slots were sold for millions of dollars from the start. It was a massive international project where cities around the world had their representatives in the competition and organized playing on their home ground, which was supposed to build a large fan base and further expand the popularity of Overwatch.
At the very beginning, this idea brought some results, the popularity of the league grew, but over time, it began to suffer from various problems that Blizzard was unable to solve. In addition to the problem that Overwatch itself was not as easy and intuitive to follow when it comes to competitive matches as some other FPS esports, another problem arose when organizations from Europe and America massively started to form teams made up of Korean players who at that time were leading the quality, which significantly decreased interest because the fans were simply not invested in unknown names who defended the colors of their club.
Instead of having fun with the burning problems, Blizzard tried to mask them and at times present an almost false picture of the situation in the Overwatch League, which they may have succeeded in initially, but over time it became clear to even the most optimists in which direction the entire competition is going. because at the end of the day numbers don't lie and sooner or later you'll run out of ways to get an audience.
The release of Overwatch 2 didn't help, the game itself as well as its esports aspect didn't gain popularity, and these are just some of the reasons why Blizzard decided to move on.
Disbanding the Overwatch League will cost Blizzard about $120 million, as each of the 20 or so participants will receive a fee of $6 million. Chengdu Hunters officially left the league in May, while Toronto Defiant also confirmed that they were leaving the league just three days ago.
Portal ggrecon.com contacted Blizzard about current events, and received confirmation from an Overwatch League spokesperson "that Blizzard will transition from the current league system to a new Overwatch esports competition model in the future."
