The Overwatch League packed a 2,000-seat venue across from Madison Square Garden, and fans howled in support of the matches. The hype was unreal, with cheers and boos raining throughout the matchups. This seems to have validated the theory behind the ambitious Overwatch League global schedule.

The Overwatch League is going to have a pretty intense amount of travel this year. Across Asia, Europe and America, Overwatch League teams are going global in a big way!

Jon Spector, vice president of the Overwatch League, feels like it’s everything they could have hoped for so far. But will it last?

A Global Affair

The third season of the Overwatch League began with matches last weekend hosted by franchises in both New York and Dallas. The sold-out shows show promise for the future of the OWL, at least for this season.

This year, they’re going to be going on a worldwide tour. Last weekend, the first of 52 scheduled events took place, for both home and away calendars of the Overwatch League players. Europe, North America and Asia will be home to several battles. From what we understand, no professional league, esports or otherwise, has undertaken such a demanding schedule. Except for perhaps, professional wrestling.

However, this could be harmful to such young players. Many of the Overwatch League players are still teens. The Overwatch League global schedule could cause burn out. These OWL players earn about $100,000 a season on average; for that kind of money, I know I’d suck it up.

This is still an on-going experiment though. We’ll have to see how it goes because not all of these events are going to sell out and be perfect. We’d like them to be, though. Seasons 1 and 2 took place at Blizzard’s facility near Los Angeles, which is still going to see players traveling quite a lot.

Each franchise is set to host between two and five weekends of competition across a 26-week season. The season will go through early August, so there’s going to be plenty of Overwatch action to go around. The Overwatch League is losing viewers and has less than some of the other major players, like DOTA 2 and League of Legends.

OWL’s Grand Finals averaged 1.12 million viewers globally in 2019. The viewership was far behind the 21.8 million average audiences for League of Legends World Championship, according to Nielsen. By comparison, Game 7 of last year’s World Series averaged 23.2 million viewers in the US and the Super Bowl drew 112.7 million.

It’s Not All Roses

Now, when you combine that news with presenters leaving and players burning out and dropping out, that can cause some worry. At least the players won’t constantly be traveling all of the time. The Overwatch League global schedule is stacked by territory. The example we saw was the Paris Eternal will open with nearly two months on the US East Coast, save for a weekend in Houston.

The mid-season will be mostly in Europe while the end will be in China. Those weeks will have bye weeks, so they can rest, recuperate and possibly see the sights. But this is a global league, so they should expect to do some travel. The OWL seems to be treating it like a real, traditional sport, so I expected to hear about travel.

Commissioner Pete Vlastelica spoke about this. “Travel is inherently a part of a global league like the one we’ve designed. We’ve done a lot of work to make sure the burden of that travel is kept to an absolute minimum.”

Of course, we must point out the fears going across China right now. Early season matches in four Chinese cities got postponed due to the coronavirus outbreak. The makeup dates have yet to be announced. That’s certainly a point of contention and worry for a global series of esports.

Vlastelica seems to be very confident regardless. “I’ve been saying this is sort of the starting line for us,” he said. “This is the year we’re going to do the thing that we’ve designed.”

Now, we hope this is a successful experiment for the Overwatch League. The events here in America went remarkably well and likely made quite a bit of money. Also, they felt like legit sporting events, with rowdy fans, jerseys and delicious food.

It may not all be roses with the OWL, but we’re excited to see this bold gamble for the Overwatch League global schedule. It’s a risky move, but it could seriously pay off and put more eyes on their game.

If this experiment works, other esports could follow suit. It’s not a new thing, either. The NFL and NBA have both hosted events in other countries, so why not esports? If other esport organizations could afford to make such a play, we’d love to see esport battles for League of Legends, DOTA, FIFA and other games sell out major arenas across their seasons.

What a great time to be an esports fan! Would you like to see esports come to your town/an arena near you? We’d love to hear about it!