Overwatch League has revealed division changes and more homestands for 2020

In 2018, The Overwatch League became the first officially franchised city-based esports league. In an interview with Dot Esports, senior director of partnerships and competition for the Overwatch League, Jon Spector spoke on how the league will be evolving next season. 

“In 2019, we had a couple of these homestand weekends… as tests and an opportunity to sort of learn and have players and staff and our team have a crack at what an event in Atlanta looks like, what an event in Dallas looks like.”

Frequent homestands

This season the league tried out two homestand matches which took OWL to Dallas and Atlanta where the events sold out. One more is planned for Los Angeles in August, but Blizzard is already convinced that they can repeat this success around the world. 

In 2020, OWL season three will have each team host a minimum of two and maximum of five homestand events at their local arenas. They will adopt the present homestand model which has players travel during the week and play their matches on the weekend. 

Division changes

OWL is presently divided into the Atlantic and Pacific Divisions with 10 teams in each. Now having teams located across the world presents numerous difficulties which Blizzard hopes to address by shrinking the number of teams in a division to 5. These divisions will then be grouped  under a larger umbrella called a conference which should help reduce the time and money associated with travel. 

Atlantic Conference 

The old Atlantic Division will now become the Atlantic Conference, with two divisions under it. The Southern Atlantic Division consists of the Atlanta Reign, Florida Mayhem, Houston Outlaws, Philadelphia Fusion and Washington Justice. 

Meanwhile, the Northern Atlantic Division includes the Boston Uprising, Toronto Defiant, New York Excelsior, and both present European teams, Paris Eternal and the London Spitfire.

Pacific Conference

This conference is split into the Western and Eastern Pacific Divisions. The Western Pacific Division has the Dallas Fuel, Los Angeles Valiant, Los Angeles Gladiators, San Francisco Shock, and Vancouver Titans. 

As for the Eastern Pacific Division, we find all Asia-based teams; the Chengdu Hunters, Hangzhou Spark, Guangzhou Charge, Shanghai Dragons, and Seoul Dynasty. 

No changes are planned to the league's current structure in the 2020 season. Also, no additional teams will be added either, instead OWL will focus on allowing existing teams to adjust to the new changes. 

The selection, operation and management of home venues will be in the hands of the teams themselves. As such, each team will be making their own announcements about their home venues which should get fans riled up for the big change. These changes are only for the 2020 season as Blizzard wishes to review their outcome before deciding whether to keep them beyond next year. 

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