Overwatch: Bigger than the Premier League?

Could Overwatch be the game to take e-sports mainstream?

Its developer Activision Blizzard has just announced the first seven team owners for a forthcoming league. It believes, in time, the tournament could prove more lucrative than the UK's Premier League - football's highest-earning competition.

Several of the successful bidders have made their mark with traditional sports teams, and the buy-in price has not been cheap.

The BBC understands the rights cost $20m (£15.5m) per squad. For that, owners get the promise of a 50% revenue split with the Overwatch League itself for future earnings.

The fast-paced cartoon-like shooter was designed to appeal to both players and spectators. It's low on gore and features a racial mix of male and female heroes, including a gay character - a relative rarity in gaming.

Unlike most e-sports competitions, each team will be based in a different major city to help owners attract home crowds.

And they will pursue the world's biggest consumer brands as sponsors, rather than the kind of games-related businesses usually associated with e-sports.

"If you want to reach 18-to-35-year-olds, you really need to be where they are, and they are playing games," Activision Blizzard's chief executive Bobby Kotick told the BBC.

"The other thing that we offer uniquely is that Overwatch is a very family-friendly game experience. It's a teen-rated game; it's super-colourful, super-friendly.

"And if you look at the geographical diversity of the maps or the ethnic and racial diversity of the characters, those are all things that we took into consideration in the construction of what we thought would be a globally appealing experience."

To start with, teams are expected to make use of existing venues, but in time Activision Blizzard believes owners will build huge dedicated stadiums of their own.

Fixtures will also be streamed online, and be made accessible from within the game itself.

A brief introduction to Overwatch

The first-person shooter features about two dozen characters who engage in team-based battles set across a near-future Earth.

Each character has a distinct personality - including a genetically engineered scientist ape, a cowboy-styled bounty hunter and a nerdy-looking climatologist - and unique abilities.

The heroes divide into four broad categories:

offence - fast-moving characters that can inflict a lot of damage quickly
defence - warriors best suited to guarding key parts of the battlefield and repelling attacks
tank - fighters that can sustain a lot of damage and are therefore well-suited to leading attacks
support - champions that help other players heal and access their most powerful attack modes more quickly than normal

Squads of six characters are pitched against each other in a range of challenges, including protecting/capturing a location; defending/destroying a vehicle as it is driven across a zone; and being first to wipe out the enemy team.

Overwatch launched more than a year ago. Numerous awards and a thriving community of about 30 million players prove it has appeal.

Even so, the new league is not guaranteed to succeed on the scale Activision Blizzard hopes.

Critics suggest some potential investors have been put off by a demand that the firm gets a reported 25% cut of any team sale.

Image captionOverwatch competitions have already drawn large crowds

And there is concern that ticket and sponsorship sales could be hit by plans to launch a similar venture based on its Call of Duty titles.

Moreover, existing e-sports competitions have yet to collectively make more than £1bn a year - by contrast Premier League clubs jointly earned £3.6bn in the 2015-16 season, according to a recent study.

TECHNOLOGY

Saturday, July 22, 2017