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The past year has been bittersweet for Activision Blizzard’s growing professional esports league, Overwatch League (OWL). The lockdowns of the pandemic may have driven record viewership to the league’s online shooter game “Overwatch,” but it also meant it had to shut down all the in-person competitions it had planned for its entire 2020 season. Now with its 2021 season underway, the league is experimenting with new ways to keep internet latency down for its online matches, and is tiptoeing back into live events in China.
Right before the pandemic hit, Overwatch League (OWL) had a new approach to drive interest in its various matches leading to its annual Grand Finals: Traveling to each of the 20 home towns of its 20 competing teams to host in-person competitions. The league was just two weeks into the program when COVID hit and it had to pivot to an online-only format.
It was then the league was faced with yet another issue. Since OWL hosts global events across three different continents—the U.S., E.U. and Asia—gamers at home had to deal with slow latency times, crippling gameplay for professional players used to playing at lag times of less than 90 milliseconds, says Kristin Connelly, VP and head of marketing at Overwatch League.
“We weren’t able to fully compete with all teams because of the way the servers are positioned around the world,” she says on the latest episode of the “Marketer’s Brief” podcast. The league created East and West divisions and fans just had to wait until its annual Grand Final to see which gamers were the “best in the world.” In 2020, “Overwatch” saw 23.6 million live esports hours watched on Twitch and YouTube, landing at spot 11 on Newzoo’s annual esports study. The game that topped the list was Riot Games’ League of Legends with 448.4 million hours.
“It was a challenging year for sure across the entire entertainment industry, but as you probably saw, gaming exploded,” says Connelly. “So Activision Blizzard had a record year this past year as people were at home, in front of their computers, with time and safely able to, not only to play, but connect with communities and their friends from the comfort and safety of their homes.”
For the kickoff of OWL’s 2021 season last week, however, the league found at least a temporary way to bring gamers from across continents together. Dubbed “Project Aloha,” the efforts brings teams from across the world to Hawaii where it has partnered with the University of Hawaii to use its underground cable that runs from Hawaii to Tokyo, where the league has set up a server. That solution, which Connelly calls a “silver bullet,” cuts down on lag time significantly. “That really changes the competitive integrity and ability to compete at the level our pros compete at,” she says.
OWL says its opening weekend viewership for its 2021 season was up more than 10% over last year, with more than 1 million unique viewers tuning in to watch its live broadcast on YouTube.
The situation is different in China, a major market for the esports league. In areas where the market has recovered from COVID, OWL is planning to return to live events with audiences. Starting this June, OWL will host three live matches in Hangzhou, Shanghai and Guangzhou. OWL also just signed a multi-year partnership with Chinese livestreaming platform Bilibili, which will get exclusive broadcasting distribution rights for its matches. The league has four of its teams located in the country with a full marketing team in its Shanghai office, dedicated to creating content tailor to the gaming community. Its 2020 Grand finals saw 1.6 million live AMA views, a 38% year-over-year increase. Of that,1.39 million live views came from China, a 260% year-over-year increase.
“In China we approach our content series with a bit more humor and goofiness if you will,” says Connelly. “And that’s a tonality we’re really leaning into with the Overwatch League—how do we celebrate the uniqueness of gamers?”
Connelly further addresses a hybrid approach to live events, and discusses working with Activision Blizzard’s new chief marketing officer Fernando Machado and how the league treats its gamers as influencers.
Listen to the full interview above.
