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Overwatch League Gets City-Based Teams
Activision Blizzard has announced the first city-based teams for the Overwatch League, including Boston, New York, Seoul, and more.
The first seven cities and owners are:
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Robert Kraft, Chairman and CEO of the Kraft Group and the New England Patriots (Boston)
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Jeff Wilpon, Co-Founder and Partner of Sterling.VC and COO of the New York Mets (New York)
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Noah Whinston, CEO of Immortals (Los Angeles)
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Ben Spoont, CEO and Co-Founder of Misfits Gaming (Miami-Orlando)
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Andy Miller, Chairman and Founder of NRG Esports (San Francisco)
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NetEase (Shanghai)
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Kevin Chou, Co-Founder of Kabam (Seoul)
The Overwatch League is scheduled to start later this year, with regular season matches played in an arena in Los Angeles for the first season. A schedule of regular city-based home/away matches will be formulated in future seasons. The league features revenue sharing for the teams as well as the ability to generate a capped amount of local revenue, monetize fie amateur events a year, and take advantage of up to 50 percent of the revenue from "fan items" (with the rest going to a shared league pool).
The league is scheduled to start later in 2017, with the full season starting in 2018.
Our Take
As a fan of regular sports, city-based teams is an analogous structure that could be appealing to casual fans to draw them into esports and the league. That and revenue sharing is a good idea.
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