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Overwatch League teams' schedule includes match play in their home cities next year

USATODAY - Tech Top Stories

The Overwatch League is going on the road. The esports league introduced by video game publisher Activision Blizzard last year announced its fledgling Overwatch League will move to home city competition starting in 2020. The shift will allow all 20 of the league's teams to play in venues within their host cities and travel for road matches against competitors. The announcement was made during the South by Southwest Festival in Austin on Friday. Entering its second season, the league – featuring Blizzard's first-person shooter video game "Overwatch" – currently hosts all teams' matches live at the Blizzard Arena in Los Angeles.


The future of esports arrives with Overwatch League launch

Boston Herald

In the soundstage where Johnny Carson and Jay Leno spent four decades filming "The Tonight Show," a former Washington State computer science student named Seagull is pursuing a South Korean teenager with a very big gun. Hundreds of mostly millennial fans in the renamed, sold-out Blizzard Arena put down their Doritos and roar for the combat between these six-player teams, eventually rising in ecstasy when the Dallas Fuel earn an unexpected point against the powerhouse Seoul Dynasty. He plays video games for a minimum $50,000 salary, health benefits, a retirement savings plan and a chunk of $3.5 million in prize money. Esports history was made Wednesday night with the debut of the Overwatch League, the first attempt to present elite computer gaming within a traditional North American sports structure comparable to the NBA or NFL. The league's 12 franchises represent cities from Shanghai to London, and they build teamwork and stress player development while competing on a weekly schedule stretching into summer.