Can someone explain me Overwatch esports? Why the fuck there are teams like San Francisco Shock and Vancouver Titans...

>Different players specialize in different heroes. They also like to have backups in case of illnesses and injuries.
In all other esports you need like 1 sub.

>Blizzard and Riot keep meta in check and dump gorillions on esports.
>Valve barely hosts TI and rake gorillions with zero effort due compendium on dota and other crap.

I find this really amusing.

Attached: 17055698.jpg (720x405, 42K)

The funniest(saddest) thing is that every single team in OWL had to spend 20 million dollars to buy a spot for themselves to "prove" to Blizzard that they were serious, and it still ended up working. Now that they are expanding OWL, the prices for spots are 30-50 million dollars. Free money for Blizzard.

Localization was the plan from the start. It was all set in motion by the original commissioner, Nate Nanzer. Blizzard liked the idea so much that they went all fucking in. But he's not going to ever see it through: Nate Nanzer suddenly left a few months ago while he was still the head of the Overwatch League. He got poached by Epic to do Fortnite esports instead. Cue the Fortnite Championship Series.

Also what said is true, Blizzard's reputation is going to (and already has to an extent) be irreparably damaged but their pockets are far from the ones suffering most -- it's the team owners who get the raw end of the deal in all this.

>Blizzard and Riot keep meta in check and dump gorillions on esports.
Makes me really wonder does Riot even make any money out of their shit esports, seems like they are also forcing gazillion different leagues all over the world. Also tried to watch some lol game today and it was just
>GO BUY HONDA THE OFFICIAL CAR OF LOL PLAYERS
>ROCKET MORTAGE GAMER FRIENDLY MORTGAGE OPTIONS

what the fuck was that shitshow.

>The funniest(saddest) thing is that every single team in OWL had to spend 20 million dollars to buy a spot for themselves to "prove" to Blizzard that they were serious, and it still ended up working. Now that they are expanding OWL, the prices for spots are 30-50 million dollars. Free money for Blizzard.

I refuse to believe this. Must be some kind of esports bubble.

Attached: ei vittu.png (1460x1708, 148K)

One thing I don't fucking get is why the fuck every damn company is so hellbent into forcing "meta"" on everyone instead of letting shit grow more independent.

Seriously what the fuck. Gets boring really fast.

Attached: 1546473546082.jpg (688x909, 90K)

>Blizzard's reputation is going to be irreparably damaged
It's pretty much in the dumpster already. They are trying to fix it with wow classic and graphic update of warcraft 3.

>The funniest(saddest) thing is that every single team in OWL had to spend 20 million dollars to buy a spot for themselves to "prove" to Blizzard that they were serious, and it still ended up working. Now that they are expanding OWL, the prices for spots are 30-50 million dollars. Free money for Blizzard.

What? Are these just some stupid boomer investors who jumped on wrong esports hype train because they don't know anything about esports and Activision Blizzard sounded nice because they are huge?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Spitfire

Makes me cringe seriously. Why they need 3 different uniforms? This is not fucking football where you need to differentiate teams on the field.

>Nate Nanzer suddenly left a few months
rat leaving a sinking ship. out of all the layoffs customer support got hit the hardest, but right after them was blizzards esports department.

blizzard keeps trying to force an esport out of nearly every game and it ends up failing. hearthstone has been on a long decline. overwatch has been a long decline. WoW has the lowest sub numbers in its history and blizz is trying to force two different esports out of a dead 15 year old game (mythic dungeon invitational and arenas). SC2 died because of it, HotS is also on life support mode because of it.

i legitimately don't understand why blizzard keeps pumping more and more money into esports, only to have the same thing happen again and again.

Attached: vaas.jpg (1280x720, 276K)

>forcing american style leagues to esports

pls no

Attached: blade runner k.jpg (1280x720, 48K)

>Are these just some stupid boomer investors who jumped on wrong esports hype train because they don't know anything about esports and Activision Blizzard sounded nice because they are huge?
Pretty much. If you go check out the stats of the official OverwatchLeague Twitch channel, they usually don't even break 100k concurrent viewers for their tournaments. I don't know how Blizzard ever managed to get OWL on ESPN either.

>I don't know how Blizzard ever managed to get OWL on ESPN either

Money, there are now 20 teams which all paid 20-60 million to participate. And for example fucking twitch for some reason paid them 90 million so they show overwatch on fucking twitch.

compete.kotaku.com/report-twitch-signs-two-year-deal-with-overwatch-leagu-1821932438

I have never seen such a huge retardation on single game. What is seriously going on with this shit game?

Maybe nepotism or some tax fraud shit.

Money is definitely changing hands. I think all of these old sports organizations are just putting their money in wrong basket because they don't know anything about the subject and Activision Blizzard sounded nice because they are huge publicly traded company and had huge plans.

>I have never seen such a huge retardation on single game.
it was back before blizzard had completely dumpstered their reputation, there were insanely high expectations for overwatch financially and desu the game made an insane amount of money the first year it came out. then people figured out it was shit and stopped playing it / spending money on it.

It's going to be nice when Activision Blizzards reputation is down the drain even with big corporations after this.

Daily reminder that OWL came extremely close to breaking even last year and will likely be profitable by the end of this season.
Also daily reminder that it is the most ambitious esports project ever and is objectively a good thing to make it more like traditional sports

>Actionvision have been shitting on everything for decades.
>None of other companies seems to give a shit about it.

I mean, suits are detached from reality. But It's fucking baffling see ignoring this stuff every single time.

Attached: 1543796926765.png (112x128, 34K)

Blizzard is pouring money into it, if blizzard were to ever stop literally nobody would play this game competitively, which is why you see teams like this, they are entirely corporate organizations.

It's like real sports. Just a franchise with a name and players from elsewhere. most OW pros are chinks

Weren't they paying thots to show up and clap?

Do you think they have success making soulless esport?

wouldnt surprise me, there are always paid actors in the crowd that they force camera cuts to during OWL

Probably, but getting people in their arena wasn't the goal for season 1 and 2 since all the games were played in Irvine. Next year is going to be make or break since the games will be localized and each team will play in their own arena like a traditional sport. Homestands (basically the prototype of this) have been extremely successful so far in terms of getting people in the door.

im an owl player ama

some gay shit funded entirely by blizzard and some dumbass investors they tricked

Starcraft killed the whole company

>Sounds like some NFL shit not esports.
Yeah it's because modern Blizzard isn't good at making esports games, they're good at killing their good games' esport scenes and pushing in artificial and forced shit instead.

Are they at least paying you well?

>have been extremely successful so far in terms of getting people in the door.
Hard to believe

go look for yourself. all the homesteads have been sold out.

salary varies widely between teams. boston treats their players like shit and gives them minimum salary(kinda frowned upon) and poor living conditions(3 players/coaches sharing one room when other teams in the league pay for individual apartments for each player)

do you start
do you think alot of players will retire with localization

>a good thing to make it more like traditional sports

Fuck off normie. Competitive gaming was better before 'esports' were even a thing.

Gt sport is the benchmark for 'esports'

not going to give any identifying info because i'd like to be able to answer any behind-the-scenes questions

i know for a fact players will retire due to localization. season 1 caused extreme burnout really early and that was all centralized to burbank with no traveling. teams that have to spend a month+ on the road in china will be exhausted and unhappy 24/7.

I agree. Each race, being that they occur at fixed times, has a sense of occasion. The championships feel real and anyone can participate.

>They also like to have backups in case of illnesses and injuries.
What, are people getting physically hurt playing Overwatch?

The presentation of the larger events is top notch aswell, they mimic actual Motorsport event presentation really well

imagine playing a game where there are dozens of characters and the only variety comes from playing different characters since each of them is super simple with only a couple skills

imagine playing the same character 10 hours a day for years so you can progame

how do you not die of boredom

Players have had wrist injuries and RSI. Even when not on stage they're practicing constantly, and most of them play with low mouse sensitivity meaning they have to move their arm a large distance to turn around.

They accidentally created an esport with Starcraft 1, but they had no control over it and didn't see any benefit from it. Now they're obsessed with making sure they don't miss out again.

>think you are obviously exaggerating the 20 million price tag
>it's fucking real
espn.com/esports/story/_/id/20673359/blizzard-entertainment-locks-two-more-20-million-overwatch-league-spots
jfc

how do esports generate revenue anyway? ad space?

they generate interest and micro transactions for the owner of the game in question.
thats why all the biggest leagues and prize pools are bankrolled by the publisher of the game in question.

Same way every other entertainment joint does.
Sponsorships(so yes, ad space among other things) and merchandise.
This is why Coke eSports exists. It's not just a bizarre twitter marketing scheme trying to get gamers to drink Coke same way we associated Mountain Dew and the Boomer meme being associated with Monster energy(which is honestly one of the more impressive and savvy marketing schemes I've seen).
Coca-Cola doesn't need to get its name out there. You know what Coke, Diet Coke, etc. is. Same as Ford or Subaru or whomever isn't going to get someone to just go buy a car from a TV spot. For them, getting the namebrand out there and getting it associated with other stuff is far more valuable. That's why Coca Cola sponsors esports, that's why they have that polar bear mascot and why all their shit becomes Christmas themed, so when you see polar bears or when Christmas rolls around, coke products will be associated with those motifs.
Coca Cola gets to be the official drink purveyor of whatever the hell they sponsor(FIFA, Madden, Overwatch, League, etc.). That's just not Coke, that's energy drinks, bottled waters, etc.

And merchandise, as mentioned earlier, just like other sports. For a less cynical parallel example, this is how many symphonic houses are staying in business. People aren't exactly dropping shitloads of money to listen to people play Bach or whatever, but people will pay money to listen to a Nintendo concert or sci-fi/fantasy movie soundtracks, and while they're there, they'll spend money on t-shirts and Zelda encyclopedias and what have you.

So for Overwatch, that's
>big name brands like Coca-Cola buying sponsorships
>people buying merchandise of teams, same way people buy Golden State Warriors or Chicago Cubs shirts
>people buying Overwatch stuff whether it be lootboxes or merchandise like figurines & art books

Valve does a similar thing with essentially crowdfunding the International via Dota 2's battle passes.

Attached: DbMBYr_U8AA4j-U.jpg:orig.jpg (1920x1080, 186K)

Sounds more like gay shit. You don't play gay shit do you? You're OP, who am I kidding?

Attached: kiruis.png (892x1316, 1.34M)