What Leagues are there/will there be?

Does anyone know if Overwatch comp leagues exist yet? If so, which ones? If not, do we know of any up and coming leagues that plan to support it?

At the very least there will be Blizzcon :D

There will no doubt be stuff like Faceit/ESEA if the keeps gaining traction. Zotac may have some involvement? ESL? Potential MLG

idk man a lot of speculation required

ESL, Dreamhack, Blizzcon, ESEA most likely.

MLG, Gfinity, FACEIT maybe

Speculation of ESL and Dreamhack already working on OW stuff

If ESEA picks up overwatch before matchmaking comes out for tf2 I can see the latter being dropped like a soggy sausage. I wonder when leagues will decide to pick this game up officially, if there are enough people in the open beta...

I would think that leagues would start as soon as there are enough people in the beta to sustain one. We could potentially see a season before the closed beta ends.

Not sure how leagues are gonna pick up the game when Blizzard got all the servers.

poppe [#7]

Not sure how leagues are gonna pick up the game when Blizzard got all the servers.

Back when I played console games competitively you could "rent a server" where it was basically a console with a really good connection hosting a private lobby and then the players join it. Entirely possible to do in this game, although without a dedicated server the PCs they would use would probably have to be pretty decent and therefore pretty pricey.

I almost certainly remember ESL putting out a tweet a few days ago saying something along the lines of "Let the countdown begin" and a picture of the Overwatch logo, or something to that effect. It seems as though they have deleted it since then.

I would assume they'll pick it up in some form no matter what. ESL has, at the very least, Go4 Cups every Sunday for just about any game that has a pulse of a competitive scene (CrossFire, Guild Wars 2, etc). Assuming this ends up being a pretty big game I think its safe to say there would be more than just weekly tournaments.

deetr [#8]

Back when I played console games competitively you could "rent a server" where it was basically a console with a really good connection hosting a private lobby and then the players join it. Entirely possible to do in this game, although without a dedicated server the PCs they would use would probably have to be pretty decent and therefore pretty pricey.

I don't think that's an option - Blizzard has confirmed that all games will be played on their own dedicated servers

Given that, I'm not sure that ESEA will pick up Overwatch - their entire model is based on offering a better competitive experience, which is heavily driven by their client and servers. I believe they have tried it before, with a League of Legends Open division Seasons 13 and 14, but that clearly fizzled out and I don't think they'd be very interested now given how much they're focusing on being the leader in CS:GO.

I think pretty much everyone will support it. Seems like the 10+ year wait for decent non-cs FPS might be over...

Is it going to even have leagues? or will it be the tourney format we see more often in current games?

ESEA isnt known for picking up non source games.

godhand [#13]

ESEA isnt known for picking up non source games.

They've ran leagues for SC2 and LoL before. If it's popular enough they'll try it.

Yeah not for long though

Yeah but none of the pro league teams or top sc2 players were allowed to play in Esea due to contracts. If Esea picked up overwatch and enough people signed up (I'm sure they will if blizzard hosts a tourney at blizzcon) they'll keep it.

E$EA

Who said blizzard was willing to work with ESEA though(their anticheat is hella invasive also)

They straight up murdered the independent broodwar leagues due to ridic contracts

I definitely see ESL picking up this game, they already picked up a few shoutcasters

ESL already got a shoutcast project for the game and I'm sure we'll see Go4Overwatch style cups for the game, with weekly prizes and a monthly final.

Another one that will be sure to pick this up is Zotac Cup, they have been doing cups ever since it was all about WC3, SC2 and QuakeLive, but recently they are just focusing in the Blizzard games and I don't know how they'd miss out on this. For Heroes they seem to give 50€ per player so I'd expect 300€ in prize for Overwatch?

I'm expecting other small tourney organizers like Gfnity to also pick this up.

Talking about big leagues, Blizzard will create their own circuit for sure and I'm expecting DreamHack to jump on this. And the Korean eSports Association (KeSPA) has tight relationships with Blizzard and lately promoted really heavily Hearthstone and Heroes in Korea, so I'm sure Overwatch will be the same. And despite popular belief, Koreans love shooter games (the 2nd most player game after LoL is a CS 1.5 clone) so its popularity there will just depend on the business model for PC Cafes.

Soooooo, TL;DR: I would expect 100% ESL, Zotac, DreamHack, KeSPA/OGN.