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What the Overwatch World Cup means for Australian esports

The Overwatch World Cup is back! (Image: Blizzard Entertainment)
Roar Rookie
21st July, 2017
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With the Overwatch World Cup kicking off today all eyes will be firmly glued to The Star casino in Sydney, which is hosting a leg of the group stages.

With an expected turnout of 2000 people and an online viewership of 10 to 20 times that, this is going to be a memorable day for Overwatch.

The game has been a global hit since launching last year. Boasting an impressive player base of more than 30 million players and reporting $US1.7 billion in revenue, Activision Blizzard want to take their game to the next step.

With esports audiences built and tailored around their other competitive titles, such as Starcraft 2, Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone, it figures that this would be natural progression, especially when you consider the fact that the esports industry is turning over hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue with big-brand sponsors starting to back competitive gaming.

Where Overwatch has struggled, however, that the current viewer numbers for the game are nowhere near what you’d expect considering the player base. If you dive into this, a lot of the community have felt that the spectator mode for Overwatch doesn’t do a good job of showcasing professional matches and can often be confusing to keep up with what is going on.

This is interesting as there seems to be a bridge from how easy the game is to pick up to how easy the game is to watch. Blizzard have noted these concerns and now heavily rely on casters of the game to narrate play in a way that is enjoyable for the audience.

Creating events like the Overwatch World Cup and their huge bet with the announcement of the Overwatch League is Blizzard’s way of looking to win new fans on a grander scale.

This all means Australia is now on the global stage, with eyes from around the world looking at us. With Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) Sydney in May the biggest esports event of its kind, now followed by the Overwatch World Cup, key international stakeholders are noting that we have the facilities and the audience to make it worthwhile hosting events here.

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More importantly, they will now be backed by results and figures.

The flow-on effect is that local sponsors will start to notice competitive gaming and make the jump into investing into esports, just as we saw when the AFL’s Adelaide Crows acquired Legacy this year.

This is huge news as this means events will start becoming grander, prize pools will be bigger and there should be an increase in local competition. This also opens Australia to international teams, as it will be worth their while if the aforementioned happens.

As long as the Overwatch World Cup manages to bring in the forecasted results for attendees and viewers, and if Blizzard can convert them into repeat visitors, this event will be a huge success and we could expect many more esports events like this in Australia.

Before 2017 we had nothing of this scale gracing our shores, and now we’ve had back-to-back large organisations investing the time and money to really awaken the esports passion in Australia.

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