I would expect to see 1 team per region, if there's 8 teams in The Gauntlet. However, if there's lets say 12 teams maybe those 4 extra spots would be given to regions, which perform best at Showdowns.

Well this is, what to expect for 2019 so can always wait and see until 2020, if something was bad and needs to change. But looks more interesting than 2018 at least.

Yeah... long term XL2, British Hurricane or possibly Toronto/Vancouver Academy (Maybe count even Florida...) doesn't sound too interesting, when only chance to get into OWL would be some other team buyout you, but why would anyone spend 100k to buyout, when they can get some free agent without spending any extra cash?

Personally this might been better for all the players being dropped since maybe someone is interested now as they can get them for free. Although I am not very familiar with players and their ages, but feels you have to be under 20 to get signed..

I could see one or two Korean rosters (to be fair I already lost track of how many there is.. Yes I am counting Mayhem too even they still have Tviq) struggle I just have a feeling that some of the Korean rosters are over hyped and they will fall short in get placed somewhere in bottom half.

I think it's pretty neat for Paris going for European way with core being French. Same goes for British Hurricane as Academy it's cool that they wanted at least have a Brit in their team.

I don't know it's pretty hard to compare NA OWL/Contenders teams vs Paris. Of course it would be cool, if NA OWL teams would have a player from their own City, but I don't think that's very likely at the moment, but in 5 years possibly. Like, if New York would have a player born in Los Angeles isn't probably the same marketing wise than French born player in Paris (mostly because we only have 1 team in France).

It will be interesting to see, which OWL team manages to appeal the best for their home crowd for 2020. Personally London doesn't interest me that much (even it was only EU team last year), but then again it's people in London area that should be interest to go and see their home games. I don't think any team wants to have millions of fans in the world, but then not enough people come to see their home games as all the fans are far away from their home city.

That's the main point pretty much. There's no real reason to keep same players in your Contenders team until someone might want to buyout them, if that takes 2+ years.

I absolutely have no idea, if any known player without a team is from NY area. The idea for getting some local area players is good, but makes you wonder though, what if local talent they would find would be Main Tank and/or Off-Tank? I'm thinking this, because obviously Tizi and Woohyal are their current MT and OT.

Local talent might be just a PR move or something, but have to give the credit for that NYXL do have some Koreans who can speak good English (and that is actually shown in their videos much more than London does with full Korean roster) and maybe by Season 3 or 4 there would be a chance mixed team in NYXL

Wasn't Woohyal and Tizi signed before the date (was October 2018?) that allowed them to be excluded for Contenders Season 1 of 2019 region lock rule? So technically only Logix counts for region-lock at the moment?

However I am actually a little bit interested to see, what's the upcoming of this thing they are doing with local NYers. Mostly, because can they actually find a player(s) that haven't been noticed yet? Or is there some NY players already in some unsigned T2/T3 (Second Wind, First Generation or some Open Division?) teams?

Although thinking this on another perspective, if they wanted to change something dramatically in their team lineup now was probably the time. I always thought that Mangachu would be signed for OWL S2 (even more after I heard 2 teams in Canada), but I am not really capable to compare him to other players of his role that got into OWL S2 (well other than like 75% of them were probably Koreans, so dunno is that why he didn't get picked up /s). Think all 3 of them were Contenders worthy players at least.

As a team XL2 lineup was pretty decent, but since no one got picked up for OWL S2 (that's, what XL2 was probably counting on) it makes probably no sense to keep them for another year. But as western player is it really a good thing to be in XL2 or Britisth Hurricane, when their OWL teams are full Koreans? If some OWL team would really want you they would have to buyout for at least 50k. Oh course Academy team pays salaries and some other benefits, but it just makes me think sometimes would anyone actually join those Academies, if they could join another Academy team?

I don't know I just want to think reasons behind things.

Well I bet you were not the only one. Map 2 and 3 were just surprised...

Sounds reasonable. Don't think there's enough (if the goal is Contenders) Finnish talent currently (outside OWL) to keep up full Finnish roster for multiple Finnish teams. At least as long as there is Gigantti, Nyyrikki and couple other teams who actively try to compete in Overwatch.

I think it's more about making OWL/Academy team than just OWL. With a slight exception for those teams, which keeps finishing at top for each season. Well at the moment it's pretty much just winner who gets much more than others, but it's not that huge income, if it's the only income.

Well hard focus only on OWL is bad, but have to say that (if all teams actually want academy team) 13 NA, 2 EU, 4 China and 1 Korea Academy teams is probably better than same number of "random" orgs, which might not be as invested into Overwatch as Academy team would be. That's good for NA based players as it secures at least 13x3-5=39-65 NA players being paid even, if every team would get 3 imports from Korea/EU/Australia/Pacific. Of course there could be teams without getting any imports so would be bigger number for NA players in Contenders. Obviously not so good for most of the other regions yet, but will have to see how things go.

At the moment it's too NA focused though, but that's partly because of all the games are played in NA, but will be interesting to see, what does saturday/sunday games mean for viewership as more EU viewers are able to watch. No idea how much from their current viewership is from each region.

It's unlikely that Contenders will ever reach that high viewership, but it's really hard to follow multiple regions in Contenders with limited time. Sometimes it just feels there's too much Overwatch going on.

It's just with all this talk with Two-Way Players that has to mean that both Contenders seasons will be played while OWL? Most sense to my mind makes that if it's while Stage 1-2 and Stage 3-4, but who knows.

Well currently Fusion University is too Korean heavy, but I really hope there won't be any Academy teams with 3 Koreans in future filling all 3 slots for non-region players. Of course this might be the case for 2019 Season 1 just, because some of them might still have contracts going.

When is 2019 Season 1 even meant to be starting? At same time with OWL? Just wondering, when we might hear news about new academy teams.

Well even I do like the pickups they do as org for their OWL and Academy teams it doesn't change the fact that I would expect them to be finish in the bottom-third in OWL with their current roster (lets be real.. there has to be at least 1 DPS player they are/have picked up, but haven't just announced it yet.. so that could boost them up in predictions a little bit).

Their academy doesn't look too bad though.

Didn't like Toronto Esports or Boston Uprising too much while last year, but have to say I am starting to like them nowadays. With upcoming soft region locking it's actually nice to see an academy team, which isn't just getting 3 Koreans. As their OWL roster isn't even 50% of Korean.

I wonder does this make Boston most popular team in Oceanic or South America?

Too lazy to make predictions myself, but hopefully most games would actually be competitive and not 4-0's with total stomp.

Well 50k salary should be fine number, if you consider what kind of numbers you can put up to make investors to pay for 6-12 players + coaches and other staff. I would assume overall salary costs for a team is over 1 million with all players and staff unless everyone is getting minimum salary. This is how I would have thought before Season 1 and I don't think it needs to change yet for Season 2. Maybe not with Season 3 either (depending how big OWL can becoming while S2). And this was just about minimum salary not everyone is being paid with only 50k + they had a contract for 1+1 years (team option) so for S3 some of the players from S1 should get a big raise, if OWL continues to grow.

Players are living in team houses or apartments so they don't really have any living expenses and just look at Fusion mansion or even 2 new teams Atlanta and Toronto seems to have a damn nice mansions too..

No idea though how much money they are actually making with all this. Of course they are throwing a lot of money into everything for couple first seasons to build the foundation like buy-ins for spot (20+ millions), building/buying/renting Arena for Season 3 in their local markets. That's most likely, where they will get even more income, if they get something like 5k capacity with filled arena every home game.

After all only after Season 3 (if localization happens) we can tell, if OWL actually is a success for viewers/fans and profitable league/business model.

I just refused to believe Boston would really be going with only 2 DPS players into a season and there was also so talks that they were not meant to be starters. Like come on Boston encountered similar issue in Season 1, when (the one who's name shall not be mentioned) they lost their starting DPS and Boston had to go with only Striker and Mistakes for rest of the season. And lets be fair Mistakes and Striker did great, but their hero pool simply wasn't matching into, what Boston had for first 2 stages.

I don't think most of these suspensions affect starting line for most of these teams though..

I think Neko (Toronto) suspension being biggest blow from any of these so far as most of the other players were likely subs.

So any guesses to which new OWL team takes up Second Wind players to their Academy roster? Washington, Toronto, Vancouver or from the old ones without a team currently in Contenders Houston or maybe even Valiant wants Academy team now for next year?

Interesting flags for each role.

Even Janus is actually good tank (somewhere around Top-10 in your rankings), but will anyone actually even remember Janus after 2 months, if Washington losses all of their games like some people are predicting? Florida and Shanghai were terrible all over last year, but will be interesting to see, if their new squads will be any improvement and make remaining players (from Season 1) look much better than they actually looked back in Season 1. I wouldn't rate Awesomeguy (or what's his new name?) or Fearless that high, but we will see, if they can show different level this year.

Top-5 and bottom-5 seems pretty accurate though into my eyes. Hard to say about new tanks for this season like BenBest or Lhcloudy or some new Koreans, when haven't seen them face the best tanks/teams yet.

I wonder though, what new signings Boston is still going to make?

I'm just waiting, which Korean roster will fail miserably and will fail to make playoffs.... How many is it even now? 5 fully Korean and then 2-3, which has just 2-3 non-Koreans? Clearly not all of them can make playoffs... Just hoping mid-season pickups won't be all Koreans...

I'm glad though that Season 2 will feature some new players from new countries, which haven't really been featured too much like Germany, Poland, Portugal from Europe, New Zealand and Taiwan from Asia-Pacific.

Only dramatic change with players seems to be Sweden as they had 10 for Season 1 and now they seem to be having only 3 for Season 2.

At least I saw somewhere, but don't ask me how it works in the end :)

[Benchmob] "Clarification on OW Contenders regional soft-lock: I’m told that non-resident players signed to contracts prior to 28 Oct 2018 will be temporarily grandfathered into Cont. 2019 S1 and will not count toward the 3-player non-resident limit. This provision will end prior to 2019 S2."

Those rules will only start to apply for first Season in 2019. And I think Alarm and Bernar likely won't count since there was "special snowflake rule", if contract was made before X date (was October 2018 or something).

Every time you see a map without any Koreans played (both teams) in OWL Season 2... I will give you a cookie. So, when is Houston and Paris match?

Davin is like 22-24, if I recall correctly some news I have seen in the past.

I think it's fine that video was in french. They speak mostly french in France so makes sense.

Sure I would like to see their content in English since I don't understand french, but at least their priority is right, where it should be - with local fans in Paris/France.

At least they were not trying to make up fan meeting in Korea.

Well without knowing the strategies for each team I would say it's pretty hard to say is it the coaching staff (which didn't prepare enough for certain maps/team combs etc) or players just playing badly or enemy team just being better in both fronts.

Although with World Cup viewer (or what ever it will be named later on, when it goes live) will change people minds, when saying who's trash and who's god. For example I have to say Muma sure did look getting totally outplayed vs UK since we did get POV from Fusions for his shatters, but I have to admit I didn't really catch a Brigitte shield bash too often without looking at kill feed icons. But all these replays really shows it wasn't just Fusions hitting Q and Muma releasing right click.

At the moment pro scene looks much more entertaining than it used, when we were just spectating dive vs dive for whole game. Sure there's a lot of goats, but people complaining about goats after 3-4 months, when dive lasted like a year...?

For Overwatch League Season 2 it's going to fun to watch Ashe as new hero + Busan and probably one more map (2cp) before season starts for first 2 stages. I am assuming that Hero 30 gets released in timeline between Stage 2 and 3 so it will be avalable for later half of the season and playoffs.

He was rumored to be in Boston?

That's what you get from the stream, but not sure would World Cup viewer actually show something else to justify some of his plays.

Aero getting owned by EU coaches after this comment is hilarious.

You obviously meant UK vs Australia semis

This aged well.

So 99,9% of the all predictions have been taken down from Akshon Esports Bracket Challenge?

Well yeah it's likely that at least 2-3 Korean rosters will be at top, but when there's 5 or more of them I just can't see all of them being in ahead of every other mixed roster. I just hope Paris or some mixed rosters beat majority of Korean rosters for the sake of some team management to start actually looking elsewhere than Korea.

If Florida is again at the very bottom for another year... I can see them just changing their coaching staff for Season 3.

I think the question is more likely how large fan pool outside of each teams hometown every team wants to have. Pretty sure most of the fans in Toronto area would support the team no matter, which players they would have chosen or how bad/good team does while Season 2.

I am not sure, what other major cities are even close to Toronto, but lets say would people from Quebec area be a fan of Toronto team with full of Korean players or any other team, which has any Canadian player?

I do wonder though, which team(s) with full or almost full Korean roster will drop into midtier or even worse?

Looking at how many Koreans were signed into OWL Season 2 from KR Contenders (or Pacific and China Contenders) though... Sure there's plenty Korean talent in Open Division or so, but at least 4-5 Korean Contenders teams lost their players to OWL teams and I think I am not even counting Korean players from China/Pacific Contenders yet. It's not really a surprise, when Toronto, Vancouver, Shanghai and Florida signed already 6+ Koreans into their rosters and presumable 1-2 of the new Chinese teams also are going for nearly full Korean too. Where as Atlanta and Washington are likely to sign 3-4 Koreans too.

At the moment, if looking at new players for Season 2 it's pretty heavy for Korea...(I only did count players who did not play at all for Season 1, did not count players like Envy, Hagopeun etc.) And I can say I might have calculated Koreans incorrectly.... since there's so many of them...

Korea 27
USA 4
France 3
Finland 2
Denmark, Germany, Iceland, New Zealand, Poland, Russia and United Kingdom each 1 (Well technically Finnsi was in S1, but after all he didnt play...)

So Region wise Korea 27, Europe 11, NA 4, New Zealand 1. Not very balanced yet. It's going to be even more heavily leaning to Korea, when Chinese teams and Vancouver announce their rosters...

Have to agree. Full Korean roster makes the whole team not very appealing to me, but then again we do have two examples from season 1 (not counting Seoul as it's a given that they are full Korean) NYXL and London.

I don't think the problem is having full Korean roster or what ever nationality as long as some of the players can be used to communicate with local fans. I don't really know how good or bad English most NYXL or London players had, but pretty much every NYXL post-game interview I remember it was SBB or Ark and both of the did talk in English and to be honest that's what I would expect to see from a player from New York that they would do interviews in English at least while we are at English broadcast. However in London post-game interviews it was always players talking Korean.

It's understandable that you don't learn a new language in few months while Season 1 or would you even want to do interviews in foreign language that you barely know, but if by Season 3 (when home games begin) we are still having full Korean rosters in any city located in North America or Europe and players still can't communicate in English (I would expect to hear English interviews from home teams, if I would go to see a game in London or in any NA city)

Although I never cared of London... but at least there's Paris now... no matter how bad/good they are I'm still gonna cheer for Paris. Just because they are truly EU team.

Season starting in Feb 14 means Stage 1 and 2 will be played with Hero 29 (presumable announced at Blizzcon) and with maps Busan and Map 20 (presumable 5th Assault map announced at Blizzcon)?

There after Stage 3 and 4 would be played with Hero 30 (presumable announced/released March/April). Assuming I am anywhere close to see timelines correctly.

I think that's more of a given with more teams in a league. It's a shame though that not every team has a chance to play twice vs each other, but there's only certain amount of days in a year anyways.

I do wonder though, what kind of schedule there will be for Season 3, when there's possibly 24-28 teams? I doubt there's gonna be 1 home and away game for each match-up as that would mean around 50 games per team for whole season.

Sure Snillo has only played Tracer in competent matches in OWL, but to be fair did he even need to play anything else so far? If team setup requires you to play Tracer 99% of the time then you will play Tracer 99% of the time. That was of course before arrival of Brigitte.

I think Mistakes is pretty good example. He was known Tracer specialist/One-Trick, but was capable to play some other heroes on a good level while Boston was on a hot-streak, but then again Mistakes was kind of forced to do such role at given time.

We really don't know how well Snillo could flex into other heroes, but hard to see him taking any playtime over Carpe or EQO unless either one of them need rest.

Maybe full-french speaking team is not very good option, but I hope they have french players are core (3-5 players). Although it might not be needed yet for Season 2 to have top french talent, but for Season 3 with home games I could see Paris (and possibly some new European teams for Season 3) might want to get some local top EU talent to hype the home crowd.

Even do I agree with most of those "flopped" players, but how did Snillo flop? He was pretty good Tracer 1-trick while Stage 3? Sure I don't think we got to see anything else from Snillo than Tracer, so maybe you can justify that being a flop, if his hero pool is that small.

What does this actually mean for future expansions, Season 3 and forwards? When there's 5 Asia, 13 NA and 2 EU teams, if they go for 4 divisions would that mean 28 or 32 teams (7 or 8 in each division)? So would final number of teams in each region be 7-8 Asia, 14-16 NA and 7-8 EU? Or would they somehow keep up NA East Coast teams with same division with EU, if they won't get enough EU teams?

Hopefully next expansion features some of these rumored cities from Asia-Pacific (Thailand, Australia, Korea) and Europe (Basically anything). Not sure how realistic team for South America is, but would be sweet.

Hard to see Sweden/Stockholm being ahead of Germany/Berlin, when money talks a lot in spots.

You could also wonder why does LONDON Spitfire need to make an event in Seoul about their team? :P

Yes players are from Korea, but team is representing London. In my eyes London has no business having official fan meeting in Seoul area unless they are actually playing a game over there vs Dynasty. But WC Quaifier is after all Blizzard event and doesn't really have to be another city in Korea to announce there just one for Asia + Toronto. I don't really know Asia as a market (like I probably heard about Guanzghou first time like few years ago and noticed it was freaking largest city in China lol).

EU though as far as I heard Paris slot would be bought with Marseille based Football team, which is (surprise) owned by some Americans. You are probably right about EU investors they don't tend up invest as easily as Americans. In the end, if there's going to be 6-7 EU teams someday I highly doubt more than 1-2 would be actually owned by EU investors.

Looks more and more interesting, when more teams outside USA gets announced.

But shouldn't more new teams be announced pretty soon already? I mean it's like mid-August and these new teams have to pick up players in September and presumable they have to hire coaches and staff who actually picks, which players they want to pick up?

There's two events, (Korean World Cup Qualifier for Asia (maybe Busan?) based team + Toronto and Gamescom for EU based teams?) where I could see them trying to announce new teams, if they want to make live announcement, but I don't know is it, what they really want to do to create more hype? That is, if they actually have deals done with teams already and just waiting for official announcements.

I am actually more interested to see what happens to player pool in OWL since currently it's 45% is koreans, 25% europeans and 20% NA. Remaining 5% is like chinese + Custa and Mickie.

I don't really care what players there will be for each team, but if percentage of korean players won't drop from 45% to >40% for Season 2 it's just going to be "Global Korean Championship of Overwatch". League just needs more diversity in players nationalities.