1. League changes
     Expansion    Playoff format    Prize pool    Player contracts    Venues  

2. Broadcasting

3. Regular season
     Overall standings    Stage 1   Playoffs  Stage 2 

4. Winnings

5. References

6. External links

The 2019 Overwatch League season is the second season of the Overwatch League (OWL), an esport based on the video game Overwatch. The season began on February 14, 2019 and will end on August 25. Postseason play will begin in August under a different format than the 2018 Overwatch League season, as it will include a play-in tournament.

The league expanded from 12 teams from the inaugural season to 20 teams. Of the eight new teams, two are from the United States, two are from Canada, one is from France, and three are from China.

League changes

Expansion

The Overwatch League initially launched with twelve teams in the 2018 season. During this season, Blizzard stated it planned to expand out the league to add six teams, ideally gaining more teams in European and Asian regions, and started meeting with potential owners in March 2018.^[1] By September 2018, Blizzard confirmed it had signed eight additional teams based in Atlanta, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Toronto, Paris, Washington D.C., Vancouver, and Chengdu, bringing the total team count to twenty.^[2] Whereas the franchising fee was estimated to be {{USD|20 million}} in the inaugial season, the fee was estimated by observers to have gone as high as {{USD|50 million}} for these new teams.^[1] The eight teams were distributed evenly between the two Divisions, with the North American East Coast and European teams joining the Atlantic Division, and the Chinese and North American West Coast teams added to the Pacific Division.

Playoff format

The 2019 season's revised schedule format was announced on December 12, 2018. The season will keep the four-stage format that was used in the 2018 season, though only the first three stages will have playoffs, while the fourth stage's playoffs will be replaced by an six-team tournament to determine the final two postseason teams.^[3] The top six season playoff teams will be determined by the same way they were in 2018; the top two teams from each division and the next four teams, regardless of division. The season playoffs will be contested in a double-elimination tournament. Teams will play 28 regular season games instead of 40, with the league citing players' mental health and additional chances to interact with their home cities as reasons for the reduction. Each stage will still last five weeks, though the break between stages has been increased from one week to two weeks (except for the break between stages 2 and 3, which is four weeks due to the league's All-Star Weekend). Each week features four games each day from Thursday to Sunday, totaling sixteen games per week, up from twelve in 2018. Teams will play zero, one, or two matches per week. The stage playoffs will double in size from 2018, expanding to eight teams, up from the four team system introduced in 2018's second stage. The top team from each division will hold the first and second seed, followed by the next six teams, regardless of division.^[4]

Prize pool

The prize pool was increased from {{Currency|amount=3.5 million|code=USD}} to $5,000,000. All eight teams who qualify for the Stage Playoffs will earn at least $25,000. The stage champion will earn $200,000 (up from $100,000 in 2018), while the amount earned by the runners-up will quadruple to $100,000. Third and fourth place teams will earn $50,000 while fifth through eighth place teams will earn $25,000. For the postseason earnings, the Grand Champion team will earn $1.1 million (up from $1 million), second place will earn $600,000, third place will earn $450,000, fourth place will earn $350,000, fifth and sixth place will earn $300,000, and seventh and eighth place will earn $200,000.^[5]

Player contracts

The season's free agency signing window opened to expansion teams on September 10, 2018 and closed on October 7, the day before the window for all teams opened. Each teams had to sign at least 12 players by December 1.^[6]

The 2019 season is also the first in which two-way contracts will be in effect. Players signed to these contracts will primarily play for their OWL team's academy team that plays in Overwatch Contenders. They cannot play in more than two OWL matches in a stage, nor can they play in an OWL match and a Contenders match in the same week. These players count towards the OWL team's 12-player limit.^[7]

Venues

Though most matches will still be played at the 350-seat Blizzard Arena,^[8] the 2019 season introduces three "Homestand Weeks," which will take place in three Overwatch League cities. The fourth week of Stage 2 will be held at the Allen Event Center in Allen, Texas and will be hosted by the Dallas Fuel. The fifth week of Stage 3 will be held at an undetermined venue in Atlanta, Georgia and will be hosted by the Atlanta Reign. The fifth week of Stage 4 will be held at The Novo by Microsoft in Los Angeles, California and will be hosted by the Los Angeles Valiant.^[3]

Broadcasting

All matches will be broadcast on the Overwatch League's website and through Major League Gaming (owned by Blizzard), and by third-party broadcaster Twitch.tv. On the first day of the 2018 season playoffs, Disney and Blizzard announced a multi-year partnership that would bring the League and other organized Overwatch competitive events to ESPN, Disney XD, and ABC, starting with the playoffs and continuing through the 2019 season.^[9] On January 28, 2019, Blizzard announced that new dedicated esports channel Esports1, owned by German sports channel Sport1, would be broadcasting Overwatch League events in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.^[10]

Regular season

A team's standing is based on both their overall match win/loss record, with ties broken by map differential, head-to-head map record, and head-to-head match record, in that order. If a tie that affects the qualification for Stage or Postseason playoffs still cannot be broken, the teams will play a tiebreaker match.^[11]

The season playoff teams will consist of the two division winners, four wild card teams with the best Regular Season records regardless of division, and the top two teams from the Play-in Tournament.^[12]

Overall standings

Stage 1

Stage 1 ran from February 14 to March 17, 2019, with stage playoffs taking place from March 21-24, 2019. The two division leaders, and the following top six teams, regardless of division, in the Stage 1 standings qualified for the Stage 1 Playoffs. The division winners were awarded the top two seeds, while the remaining remaining teams received seeds three through eight based on their Stage 1 records.^[12] All matches emanted from the Blizzard Arena in Burbank, California.

At the conclusion of the first stage, both the Fusion and Defiant were tied for third place after considering all tie-breaking resolutions; similarly, the San Francisco Shock and the Seoul Dynasty were tied for sixth place. By league rules, both ties were to broken by an off-stream match. While the sixth-place tie was decided in this manner, the Defiant and Fusion mutually agreed to settle the third-place tie by a coin flip. Due to issues on reporting the coin flip, league commissioner Nate Nanzer stated that the league would not allow teams to decides such ties by one in the future.^[13]

Playoffs

Stage 2

Stage 2 will run from April 4 to May 5, 2019, with stage playoffs taking place from May 9–12. The playoff format will not change from Stage 1.^[12] All matches will emante from the Blizzard Arena in Burbank, California except for the fourth week of play, which will take place at the Allen Event Center in Allen, Texas, the first of three "Homestand Weeks" of the season; this stage's Homestand Week is hosted by Dallas Fuel.^[3]

The second stage is the first in which assault map Paris will be available for play. It is also the introduction of new support character Baptiste into professional play. Baptiste was designed by Blizzard as to disrupt a three-tank, three-support composition (frequently called GOATS in the game's player base in reference to the non-league team that popularized it) which had been dominating Overwatch{{'s}} metagame for several months prior to the 2019 season and had been frequently used by teams during Stage 1.^[14][15]

Winnings

Teams in the first season competed for a total prize pool of {{USD|5 million}} across regular season play, stage finals, and playoffs. By League rules, at least 50% of these winnings are split among the team's members, the remaining going to the team's owner.

References

External links

• {{official|https://overwatchleague.com/en-us}}
• {{official|https://bnetcmsus-a.akamaihd.net/cms/content_entry_media/bb/BB6C3OEC530B1549590044543.pdf|2019 Overwatch League rules}}

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