Blizzard’s Overwatch League has unbelievable first day after highly anticipated launch.
Day one of Blizzard’s new Overwatch League will go down in eSports history as being a gigantic success.
The highly anticipated launch of the new league arrived Wednesday, 10th January as an astounding 415,000 Overwatch lovers tuned in to Twitch to see what the competition had to offer.
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Despite massively exceeding predictions, these numbers should come as no surprise. After all, Overwatch drew some 7 million players in the first week after its launch in May 2016 with the number of worldwide players currently sitting somewhere within the region of 40 million.
Big money is up for grabs in the new league too with the winners of the play-offs set to receive $1m when the debut campaign all wraps up in late July. The overall prize pool sits somewhere around $3.5m – meaning it ranks as one of the richest leagues in all of eSports.
The Overwatch League may well be revolutionary in eSports given that it has adopted many characteristics from the world of traditional sports.
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The league, for example, features a pre-season, regular season and play-off period just like the NBA or the NFL. It also has regional teams such as Boston Uprising and Shanghai Dragons.
They even have an All-Star weekend!
Only one day into the newly formed league season there is no doubt that Blizzard have gotten off to an absolute flyer.
If viewers stick with it, Overwatch will undoubtedly go down in history as one of eSports most positive starts to a new competition and an overall triumph for the wider eSports community.