The Overwatch League has announced the departure of caster Erik "DoA" Lonnquist. Additionally, the league has confirmed the addition of Andrew "ZP" Rush to its casting lineup.
We will truly miss having @ggDoA, @MonteCristo, and @MLGPuckett around next season.
— Overwatch League (@overwatchleague) January 6, 2020
Thank you for all of your contributions and everything you've done for this community, we hope to see you back on the show soon 😉 pic.twitter.com/5wUMlhSZrg
Very happy to announce that my fifth year of casting @PlayOverwatch will be done with the @OverwatchLeague for the 2020 season! It's been a long journey to get here, but I can't wait to get started casting some of the very best Overwatch in the world alongside @jakeow.
— Andrew Rush (@TempoZP) January 6, 2020
Last week, DoA announced that his contract with the league was over but he was still in the negotiations phase. He has since decided against pursuing an extension of his Overwatch League contract, citing issues he had with "creative direction, management, and resistance to input from veteran esports personal."
Since then, ZP announced he will move up from casting Contenders to casting in the Overwatch League alongside Jake, who joined the Overwatch League talent team in December.
Both DoA and ZP have casted in the Overwatch since the game's early days. ZP has been an Overwatch caster since 2015 when the game was in beta and DoA has been a caster since 2016 when he casted the first season of APEX and the World Cup.
Nonetheless, the two did not enter the Overwatch League at the same time. DoA was a member of the original casting lineup for the Overwatch League in 2018 while ZP was not included in that talent lineup. Instead, he continued casting in Contenders as it moved from its first season in 2017 into 2018 and has casted there since.
ZP and Jake are the second confirmed casting duo of the 2020 Overwatch League season. Bren and Sideshow confirmed a few days ago they are moving from the analysts' desk to casting for the 2020 season. There are three other casting duos from last season--hexagrams/Semmler, Achilios/ProxyWolf and Uber/MrX--that have not made any announcements regarding their status for next year. If all three duos come back there will be at least five English-language casting duos for the Overwatch League's 2020 season.
DoA is returning to freelancing as an esports caster, which he did prior to joining the Overwatch League. He said he was not ruling out participating in Overwatch and the Overwatch League in the future.