After a very successful inaugural season, it didn’t take long for Blizzard to drop some very big news regarding the Overwatch League’s second season. London Spitfire’s win over the Philadelphia Fusion is still fresh in everyone’s mind, and yet we already have news regarding the sophomore year and Blizzard’s plans for the future.

There were a couple of rumors floating around over the last couple of weeks regarding which new cities will be announced, however, it was all up in the air – until now.

Blizzard announced that the League will be expanding by four slots and that the first two new Overwatch League cities will be Atlanta, Georgia as well as Guangzhou, China. The Atlanta team will be owned by both Cox Enterprises and Province Inc. who have partnered to create the Atlanta Esports Ventures.

The Chinese team is owned by Nenking Group, an entertainment conglomerate who also happen to be the owners of the Guangzhou Long Lions as well as the Chinese Basketball Association. This will be China’s second spot in the franchised league. Unfortunately, the Shanghai Dragons didn’t find any success in the Overwatch League throughout it’s run this year as they failed to win even a single match.

Many analysts thought that China had more talent to offer and that the Shanghai team was inappropriately led from the very get-go, which hindered their chances of performing up to expectations.

Blizzard is also supposedly seeking at least $30 million per Season 2 expansion slot which is, to be fair, quite a large sum of money. That’s also not the final amount, and some sources say that the number could even be doubled depending on how many cities are competing to get into the franchised league. Blizzard is upping the price after a very successful first season, and while that was expected, it’s still an enormous price tag considering the fact that Overwatch esports is still in its infancy.

With Atlanta and Guangzhou already announced, there are rumblings of Toronto and Paris (as well as another European city) getting spots as well, but so far there hasn’t been any confirmation.

Currently, eleven out of the twelve teams that are competing are owned by American companies, so introducing two additional European teams should create a more balanced league around the globe, according to Blizzard Esports CEO Pete Vlastelica.

Watchability

For Europeans, adding more teams into the mix might not be such a positive thing. They already had a very, very hard time following the Overwatch League as the games were always broadcasted in the middle of the night. That’s a problem seeing how Blizzard is trying to market the Overwatch League as a global esport – it’s hardly global if a good part of the globe can’t watch.

That said, Blizzard is aware of the problem, and they should be coming up with an acceptable solution sooner rather than later.

Perhaps A Bit Too Much Overwatch

Another dilemma that will eventually come into the spotlight is just the sheer amount of games that will be played. With twelve teams in the league, you had up to twenty-four hours of game time per week.

If you add more teams to the mix, that number will increase exponentially.

While getting more high-quality Overwatch is far from a bad thing, Blizzard might want to slow things down a bit.

The Pressure Is Mounting

With the undeniable success of their inaugural season, all eyes are set on Blizzard and how they will further develop their ambitious project. Right now, the expectations are higher than ever, and the pressure is mounting. They need to come up with a sustainable schedule that will also be able to attract new viewers as well as enable Overwatch to grow as an esport.

Blizzard’s All-Star Overwatch weekend kicks off on August 25th with a series of custom matches, whereas the Atlantic and Pacific divisions square off on the 26th. We might get additional information on the sophomore season by the end of the month, but that’s just a guess.