The Overwatch<\/em> League\u2019s big promise was city-based stadiums. That was never intended to be fulfilled at the league\u2019s launch, it won\u2019t happen in the second season, and the l<\/span>eague hasn\u2019t even announced a timeline for when it might. For now, the teams will continue to play in the league’s studios in Burbank, California.
Still, it\u2019s clear that Blizzard truly believes in the idea. <\/p>
\u201cThere are millions of fans around the world that don\u2019t get an opportunity to come to these events,\u201d Overwatch<\/em> League commissioner Nate Nanzer told Dot Esports in August<\/a>. \u201cOur goal is to get the teams into the home markets and give people in Houston, people in Shanghai, people in Seoul, people in Dallas, an opportunity to engage with the content live.\u201d<\/p>
Related: <\/strong>A blurred line between work and play could cause trouble for the <\/strong>Overwatch<\/em><\/strong> League<\/strong><\/a>
The Overwatch<\/em> League in its current iteration has 40 games for each team in the regular season, spread over 20 weeks of play broken into four stages. (The league plays out from Wednesday to Saturday.) \u00a0Teams play two games a week, sometimes on back-to-back nights. Teams and players have struggled to fend off burnout<\/a> during the Overwatch<\/em> League\u2019s first season. <\/p>
Multiple players across nearly all of the Overwatch<\/em> League\u2019s teams have reported feelings of burnout, including Philadelphia Fusion support Alberto \u201cneptuNo\u201d Gonz\u00e1lez<\/a>, Dallas Fuel flex Brandon \u201cSeagull\u201d Larned<\/a> and DPS player Timo \u201cTaimou\u201d Kettunen, and New York Excelsior sniper Kim \u201cPine\u201d Do-hyeon<\/a>. Players reported mental health changes, like depression and anxiety, on top of physical symptoms of excessive stress\u2014mystery illnesses caused by compromised immune systems. The Overwatch<\/em> League and its team management will have to overhaul its mental and physical health regimens if players are to be kept healthy during travel. A scheduling makeover is part of that restructuring.
A guideline to consider is the structure of the NFL. Admittedly, the NFL is hardly a bastion of player health standards, but that\u2019s an issue with the sport itself, not the schedule. There are 32 teams in the NFL, and each team plays 16 games over a 17-week period. Over the entire season and all teams, that\u2019s 256 games. It adds up to one game a week for each team, half at home and half on the road. It\u2019s a lot of travel. Teams in the NFL have adjusted to it, but it still affects games. In 2012, Grantland looked into travel in the NFL<\/a> and found that teams that traveled 2,000 miles or more during the 1997-2011 NFL seasons won 39.8 percent of their games. Teams that had trips 1,000 miles or less won 43 percent of games, however, which isn\u2019t a gargantuan difference.
The NFL and other pro sports prove that it’s possible to have a regional based league that can support player health in regards to travel and workload, but the Overwatch<\/em> League will have to change. By season three, the l<\/span>eague will likely have more teams\u2014there are already two out of an expected six new teams<\/a> for season two. More teams could make schedules more manageable, allowing players more downtime between matches. (How that extra time is filled, however, will be up to team management.) There\u2019s no indication of how many teams the Overwatch<\/em> League will have in 2020, or whenever the city-based structure is deployed, though. Blizzard will have to find its own framework for the league, offering up enough games to keep fans happy while prioritizing player health.
An ESPN report<\/a> from early June said that the Overwatch<\/em> League\u2019s executives haven\u2019t decided yet how the travel aspect will work. One idea concocted by Blizzard was for \u201croadshow\u201d-style events that takes all division teams to one city at a time as a regional tour, according to an ESPN report<\/a>. Pacific division teams would travel from \u201cmidwestern United States, the West Coast of the U.S., and then through Asian cities,\u201d according to the ESPN report. For Atlantic Division teams, travel would run through \u201cthe East Coast of the U.S. then to Europe.\u201d
Related: <\/strong>Atlanta and Guangzhou, China are the first expansion cities for <\/strong>Overwatch<\/em><\/strong> League season two<\/strong><\/a>
\u201cHaving two games a week is obviously not great,\u201d Philadelphia Fusion coach Yan Luu told Dot Esports in July<\/a>. \u201cI don\u2019t know if that\u2019s going away, but obviously we\u2019d rather have one team to prepare against instead of having a lot of variation and randomness associated there.\u201d
