In 2022, Blizzard Entertainment released the official sequel to the first-person hero shooter game Overwatch. While the launch of Overwatch 2 wasn’t met with the warmest responses from fans and gamers, the game has exceeded forecasts and reached over 50 million active players as of January 2024. The game, which is a sequel and successor to 2016’s Overwatch, introduced new players and changes to gameplay, to polarizing effect.
Today, Blizzard Entertainment has continued to introduce updates to the game to help ease the transition between the Overwatch players’ love and the new changes brought by the sequel. One of the most significant efforts to do this is Blizzard’s commitment to bringing back Overwatch’s esports scene.
Back in the day, Overwatch’s esports scene was a tight-knit community with an especially large following in South Korea, where most of the most skilled teams hail from. There was the Overwatch World Cup (OWWC), an annual international Overwatch esports tourney by Blizzard, that took place between 2016 and 2019, before returning in 2023 after the pandemic-induced hiatus. These tournaments were hosted mostly in the US, although the 2017 OWWC notably took place in various venues around the world, from Shanghai and Sydney to Katowice and Santa Monica.
Aside from the OWWC, Blizzard also produced the Overwatch League (OWL), a professional esports league for the game modeled after traditional North American sports leagues. In the league, teams used city-based names such as Soul Dynasty, Toronto Defiant, and Shanghai Dragons. Unfortunately, in 2023, Blizzard announced the closing of the OWL in favor for a more traditional esports structure, which would become the Overwatch Champions Series (OWCS) in 2024.
Below, we’ll take a closer look at Overwatch’s passionate esports community and the newly established Overwatch Champions Series. Afterwards, we’ll look at other ventures into the future of Overwatch esports, like the Esports World Cup:
The Overwatch esports community
As mentioned, Overwatch’s esports scene is packed with high-stakes competition and equally passionate fans. Throughout the two games’ esports history, viewership peaked during the 2018 Inaugural Season: Stage 1 of the Overwatch League, drawing in 437,006 viewers. The prize pools for official Overwatch tournaments and events are also significantly high, with the Overwatch League 2019 Playoffs topping the chart at a whopping $3,500,000.
With so much money involved in the game’s esports scene, it’s no surprise that fans are just as passionate about esports betting. To this day, online sportsbooks still offer various Overwatch betting odds, covering various events, from the new OWCS games to the inaugural Esports World Cup in 2024. For the community members avidly betting on Overwatch, the esports betting platform Thunderpick features flexible betting markets like Map Handicap and Total Kills, giving bettors more options than more rigid odds like Correct Score and Match Winner.
However, things have shifted since the days of the now-defunct Overwatch League. The aforementioned Thunderpick platform, for example, supports cryptocurrency payment methods for Overwatch 2 bets — a feature that may not necessarily be too common or popular back in the day.
The Overwatch Champions Series
The rebuilding of the Overwatch League into the Overwatch Champions Series was initially met with confusion from fans. Still, this hasn’t stopped esports organizations and teams from trying to get into the ecosystem and revive what was once one of the most popular and competitive esports scenes.
One of the major changes in welcoming the OWCS is that Blizzard has opted for partnerships to oversee specific regions. For example, ESL FaceIt Group, known for managing Counter-Strike and Dota 2 events, operates the North America and EMEA regions, while WDG was selected to oversee Asia.
Earlier this year, Blizzard officially announced the nine teams selected across three OWCS regions — Asia, North America, and EMEA. The South Korean Gen.G brand, known for its League of Legends and Valorant teams, now operates under the EMEA region. Holding the fort in the Asia region, South Korean and League of Legends powerhouse T1 has re-entered the Overwatch esports scene for the first time since 2022. Considering T1’s recent successes in other esports titles like League of Legends and Valorant, its appearance in the OWCS may help breathe new fire into the budding esports league.
Overwatch and the Esports World Cup
Finally, the journey ahead for the Overwatch esports scene involves solidifying the new Overwatch Champions Series ecosystem and structure. On top of that, Blizzard has also joined hands with the Esports World Cup Foundation to help bring back the esports scene’s numbers to what it once was.
Part of the 2024 Esports World Cup, Overwatch 2 saw 16 teams competing for a $1.05 million prize pool for the first time in a seemingly long time. Japanese team Crazy Raccoon emerged victorious after a flawless group stage, having only dropped two maps in total against opponents Team Falcons and Toronto Ultra. The event peaked at 100,000 viewers, showing renewed interest in the game’s esports scene.
Most recently, Overwatch 2 was confirmed as the 12th title to be featured at the 2025 Esports World Cup, joining EAFC 25, Call of Duty: Warzone, Free Fire, and more. We’ll have to wait and see how the game’s participation in the Esports World Cup will impact any or future Overwatch World Cup events, but Blizzard’s commitment to supporting the game’s esports ecosystem certainly shows promise.
