OWL is a huge investment for many teams. $20,000,000 is a lot to spend. Overwatch has had mediocre success in the pro scene, with an average of 15-20k viewers on large tournaments and even 35-40k+ on massive tournaments.If overwatch league somehow fails, may that be because of the possible lack of viewers, lack of attention and popularity in general, will Overwatch esports still be a large esport? Or will teams abandon the game and eventually have the game fizzle out slowly?
Put it simply in my opinion its just too big to fail, that is no to say it will be success blizzard seems to expect. It will most likely be fairly popular esport but nowhere near likes of cs go dota and lol. Because of scale and pure amount of money invested in it, it will get attention of media and advertising so it will gain on popularity and probably grow throughout next few years but i dont see it breaking into top 3 most popular esports i mentioned earlier.
Blizzard tries to make owl similar to traditional sports and in my opinion its completely wrong. I think that its traditional sports that will slowly become more similar to esports. Blizzard pushes this "home team" concept but the popularity of home teams in traditional sports is due to the fact that back in the days you just were not really able to cheer for teams from outside your town/country. Esports are so global that people a lot of times cheer for teams that live on the other side of the globe and i think thats also something that will slowly happen in traditional sports.
But with all this said esport also can take a lot from traditional sports so change will happen in both ways.
sorry its written really quickly and might not make sens sometimes
oh also i expect owl to get over 100k viewers on big games and, maybe 30k-50k avg on normal games during league (depending on teams playing and combining different language streams)
im going off of contenders earlier western tournaments owc and some lans that happend this year and i know something about them as i used to follow viewership and post threads about it (ill probably do something like this for owc finals as preparation for owl)
one more addition :P the game wont "fizzle out" because game doesnt equal esport and even if owl totally fails overwatch as a game is very popular and will continue being such for probably quite some time
It won't fail. It may not break massive success in its very first seasons, but it'll grow. Like Remiska said, the media is going to give OWL a massive amount of intention. If Blizzard plays it right with rewards, skins, etc, i could see OW breaking top 3 by season 3 or 4. Just give it time man. Don't forget that we're only halfway into our second year.
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