The final line up of teams for season two of the global esports competition Overwatch League has been announced. And an Australian city is notably missing from the list.
Back in June, I wrote elsewhere about word from good sources that Blizzard Entertainment, the company behind Overwatch League, was on the hunt in Melbourne for team investors. They wanted to be here, but in the end the deal just didn’t come together. And that’s a sad moment.
No one has launched an esports league quite like Overwatch. Where the history of esports has been around building cool brands without hitching their wagons to any specific city, Overwatch League has embraced the traditional sport idea of teams that belong to towns.
With big cities right there in the team name, it’s far easier to grab the attention of people who don’t even know esports exists. Team Liquid? Faze Clan? Whatever, weirdo. LA Valiant? Houston Outlaws? OK, yep, they’re sports teams.
Esports is a big realm, and growing faster by the minute. There’s many games being played at many levels of competition. But so far, Australia is largely represented on the world stage only by outstanding individuals who left home to chase the dream.
There’s Anathan ‘ana’ Pham who just played a starring role in OG’s victory at DOTA’s The International 8, taking home a novelty cheque payday in the millions of dollarydoos.
Then there’s Renegades and Fnatic in CS:GO and Rainbow Six, respectively, both starting as Australian breakout successes before being snapped up by global brands.
And in the Overwatch League itself, Scott ‘custa’ Kennedy has been one of the standout players for the LA Valiant.
Go to any Aussie nerd event and you’ll see more than a few folks wearing the Valiant green and gold jersey with Custa’s name on the back.
All these (and more) have proven there’s a lust for success at the individual level, but Australia as a nation is still an esports lightweight. Domestic leagues are developing fast, but they’re still a junior division compared with other regional leagues.
Digital might have brought the world closer together in many ways, but in gaming distance still matters – we can’t easily train against the best in the world from our remote island home. And we’re a small population with a notoriously lack lustre internet that makes even domestic competition a struggle.
With the smaller scale comes the business fear of making big investments. And Overwatch League wanted the biggest bucks around. Rumours suggest the first season teams required US$20 million to buy into the league, and for season two that number could have been as high as US$30-60 million.
That’s a lot of biscuits. And that’s undoubtedly the reason we missed out. Local business brains just couldn’t secure, or justify, that kind of money to put one new team into one esport.
Overwatch League head honcho, Nate Nanzer, told me earlier in the year that Asia Pacific and Europe were the two big targets for the season two expansion.
But in the end, the eight expansion teams delivered four new North American teams, three Chinese teams, and one in Europe. Even Korea – the hottest domestic esports market in the world – didn’t get another team.
Money talks, and big audiences make it easier to earn back the big investments. Raw maths has kept the door closed for now.
AFL teams have been investing into other esports, most notably League of Legends. They’ve been using their sports smarts and facilities to improve training regimens, but all at a far cheaper cost than that single Overwatch League slot.
That Melbourne target may have been to entice an AFL club to shift gears into an Overwatch League slot. Maybe with a little extra help from the Melbourne government who are doing a lot to invest in digital entertainment and esports, like with the recent Melbourne Esports Open. But it wasn’t to be.
For now, the fanbase will keep cheering on the local scene and those Aussies repping us at the highest level overseas. And keep dreaming of those breakthrough moments when the big leagues and investors put us where all Aussies know we truly belong — punching above our weight on the world stage.