Last July, the inaugural season of Overwatch League concluded with a dominant performance by the London Spitfire over the Philadelphia Fusion. Today, those two teams are headed for a rematch to kick off Overwatch League's second season. Matches are starting right now.
OWL season two brings with it a number of changes. First off there's eight new teams from Atlanta, Washington D.C., Vancouver, Toronto, Paris, and the Chinese cities Hangzhou, Guangzhou, and Chengdu. There's also been a ton of player transfers, and last season's winless Shanghai Dragons are actually looking pretty strong.
The elephant in the room, of course, is the fact that Activision Blizzard just laid off approximately 800 people across the company, and folks like photographer Robert Paul and the Esports Makeup team Lorena Acevedo and Rosa Menedez weren't brought back for the league's second season.
This leaves Overwatch League in an precarious position. Blizzard is by no means a company in crisis—it did just achieve record profits in 2018. But with interest in Overwatch declining in the face of games like Apex Legends and the slate of triple-A's releasing tomorrow, it remains to be seen if OWL will capture the same audience it did a year ago. I guess we'll find out soon.
If nothing else, Gritty is there:
