Overwatch League reveals minimum player salaries and more

#1

remiska

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i was quicker then you over.gg ;)

#2

penda

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Hopefully there's a players' union to ensure fair treatment for all players

#10

ideekae

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rip korean 100+ hour work weeks

#12

KuroiRyuu9625

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Agreed, something that can handle contract dispute and/or other details not laid out by Blizzard's regulations.

#3

Pixelfish

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Remiska should be new owner of over.gg

#5

Admirable

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we've just handed the keys over, peace out

#7

remiska

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thx a lot, 1st order is more memes and puns

#17

Admirable

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done deal

thanks for the $50k minimum salary, boss

#18

KuroiRyuu9625

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Give me 4 stars and I can make 50k happen for you. Just don't ask me where/who I got it from. And avoid large bodies of water for a lil while.

#9

remiska

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i just spend too much time in the internet.......

#4

penda

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Pixelfish, I would watch what you say we aren't strong enough to topple the Yangsheng dynasty

#6

Pixelfish

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Penda new flag?

#8

remiska

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yup yesterday it was different

#11

KuroiRyuu9625

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The more information comes out the people can make educated decisions about this. I do think that because of their top down approach there will always be a ridiculous amount of questions since we don't know what will happen to the rest of the scene, but it's a start.

With the pace at which they've been releasing this lately I think a Q4, 2017 start looks doable. I'd love a press conference or some medium of information exposure where they'd talk about their vision for the Overwatch scene as a whole.

Like what happens to the rest of the world, outside of OWL, Contenders and the Open Division, i.e. like tournaments (big and small), LANs etc...

Oh and I support more puns on over.gg

#19

tamagao

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Best case scenario for their current timetable means that within the next several months there will be more regular balancing and an improved spectator HUD, plus more teams joining OWL soon.
Worst case scenario is that they let OWL begin with only 7 teams and a barely improved spectator experience in their effort in making sure they complete their promise of a 2017 start.

#27

KuroiRyuu9625

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They have 5-6 months to get their fixes in, so I can see that happening. It would honestly be weird to have season 1 of OWL without Rogue and nV. Lunatic Hai is a possibility but it's hard to tell with how their coach reacted. Who knows, maybe the guy with the Seoul spot could just buy the tanks/supports from LH and add the DPS from KDP.

I'm joking, but that would be scary as fuck.

#13

Pixelfish

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KuroiRyuu also changed his flag PogChamp

#14

remiska

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im alweys gona stay evil japan

#15

KuroiRyuu9625

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I just noticed that we joined over.gg on the same day o.O

#16

remiska

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but you have full star and i dont :(
(im not the nicest persone and insult people so that might have something to do with it)

#20

Pixelfish

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EVEN SCRUBASAURUS? WHY IS EVERYONE CHANGING THEIR FLAGS

should I change mine to fit in? pls help

#26

KuroiRyuu9625

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Hey I'm legit, can't blame me for being my special Unicorn self.

#21

Kiwifruit

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Exciting news, Will be interesting to see how many orgs keep teams and how many pick up other players/entire rosters. Do we know if any more spots are going to be bought or could we end up with just the 7?

#23

tamagao

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They've announced plans to add more but to my knowledge it isn't guaranteed.

also pixelfish i'm just supporting the estonian world cup team

#22

Pixelfish

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Or should I wait till everyone changes their flags, then I become the guy with the rare USA flag? :thinking:

#31

Tears

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we'll be the last surviving muricans

#24

Admirable

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Only 8/24 posts on topic. Impressive 66% shitpost rate. Sterling work!

#25

BigBad01

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What's the opposite of :candle?

#28

tamagao

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Also I'm hoping it takes a couple weeks for any deals to go through (besides the Immortals players signing with the team they already have) because I imagine it won't look too appealing for investors to join in if the cream of the crop is already taken.

#29

KuroiRyuu9625

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For the most part this would mean that being signed to a current org doesn't mean much if you'rte looking to be in the OWL.

I believe it was said before but for them free agents just make things easier, no need to break then resign etc...

Also just so happens that we have a large pool of available talent so hopefully the ones most deserving get in.

#30

JUDDY

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Ez4 Seagull

#32

Pixelfish

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We will cry TEARS of pride

#33

Tears

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indeed brother, indeed.

this is the shitpostiest thread i've seen on this site i s2g

#34

KuroiRyuu9625

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An announcement as big as this one deserves bants and shitposts of an appropriate scale.

#35

fellah

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this league will be a faillure for sure, no orgs in ow (besides nrg with 2 players on the roster) will have the finance to do this wauw.. gg

#38

BourbonKid

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Did you know they have sell 7 spots at 20M each ?

The owner of the Patriots certainly have enough to pay his employees 50 K A year. WIch is not that much tho.

Plus players will bring money to the "orgs" with merch or good results.

#44

pogtromp

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50k
not that much

cmon man. 50k decent. you gotta consider everyone as rookie in the first season.

#45

Generation1

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That's not even that much... Most orgs are already paying their players this. The average salary is 4-6k a month with significantly lower prize pools.

#36

robokun87

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I guess that's why Blizzard are pretty much trying to do away with orgs and bring in multi-million or even billion dollar franchises who can afford this much money but will they find a dozen of them to do it or what that remains to be seen and if not can the likes of Rogue and C9 pay what, 300k a year in salaries? that's quite a ton of money.

#37

ManuxBaka

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Really good news seeing health insurance and retirement savings plans

It's something underrated but very important for the players and it's actually inexistant or very hard to get.

With that statement we can clearly see esport going in the right direction ( where player matters ! )

And of course the sharing of the earnings will create even more competitiveness this is an exciting news for the OWL

#39

KuroiRyuu9625

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#35 "this league will be a faillure for sure, no orgs in ow (besides nrg with 2 players on the roster) will have the finance to do this wauw.. gg"

That comment makes little sense considering they apparently have 7 investors already. As for what the other endemic Orgs that what in will do...that I don't know. I'm assuming some some of partnership could be possible if they really wanted in. That or just finding more investors like Team Liquid or Lazer Kittens (not confirmed, just examples)

#36 "I guess that's why Blizzard are pretty much trying to do away with orgs and bring in multi-million or even billion dollar franchises who can afford this much money but will they find a dozen of them to do it or what that remains to be seen and if not can the likes of Rogue and C9 pay what, 300k a year in salaries? that's quite a ton of money."

Player salaries won't be much of a problem for Orgs that pay millions in salary in their respective leagues already so that's not what I'm worried about. My concerns are mainly around viewership for the league and the health of the rest of the scene.

The more recently released information shows they're in this for the relative long run, including making sure players start early on the retirement fun and have active life insurance.

#40

robokun87

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For those franchises $300k+ isn't much no but what if C9 have to buy a spot AND pay that a year plus the retirement shit they will only do that if they are guaranteed to cover those costs from the league and not just rely on them placing first because if C9 have to place first to make that money back I can't see them buying a spot considering C9 will never take first, but we will see I guess.

#41

KuroiRyuu9625

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I don't think any team would balance being in the league against taking first. You need the appropriate amount of investment long before then.

As you mentioned I'm not sure C9 would be looking to get in either, unless they've found some serious backing like IMT did.

#42

BigBad

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I would presume that most of the money that most OWL orgs make will be in the form of advertising, sponsorships, and in-game merchandising.

#43

penda

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Team skins??? PogChamp

#46

JBZ

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So how do the orgs make their money, let's say an org has 12 players, who all get 50,000$ a year, that's 600,000$ total, even if they win the league, at least 500,000$ go to the players, so the org is at -100,000$, plus they have to provide housing.

So even if an org has only 8 players who all get 50,000$ a year (400,000$ total), they win the league and the org makes 500,000$, so they're up 100,000$ -housing costs, but then again, only one org would get this, and most orgs would probably even pay a little bit more than 50,000$ a year.

So how are they able to make this profitable for the teams, do they get money from sponsors, merch, ...?

I mean the spots have already costed huge amounts of money!

#47

One_Punch_Man

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so many comments on here don't understand how the real world works saying OWL is going to be a failure/how they will make money
:notlikethis:

#48

Generation1

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I don't get how people don't understand this?

Lets use an analogy. The Lions are one of the worst teams consistently in the NFL right? They never win the super bowl, rarely make the playoffs, and have outright awful seasons most years. How do they make money then if they never win the Super Bowl?

Because people buy tickets to see the events, which OWL has been said will be all LAN and localized for every game. So theres 1 source of income.

Teams also sell Jerseys etc of their players. There is another source.

Teams also have wildly popular streamers like Seagull who get donations and subs which they usually take cuts of. So there is another.

Teams are also sponsored by all sorts of companies, and they get paid for their viewership and the return on sales. This is probably the largest source of income for teams.

Prize pools will also increase over the years. We are talking 1 million dollar minimum prize in year 1. Imagine what it could be in 5 years if things go well?

There is plenty of room to make money.

#49

remiska

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you seem to not understand 1 thing, people who doubt owl doubt it will get any viewers so nothing you mentioned is gona work
and they are right currently top tournaments (apex) getting 50k-70k viewers? thats preaty bad rocket league which is also a new esport easily gets few houndred thousend if owl doesnt hit soon interest in game will die out and its realy hard to come back from this

#50

KuroiRyuu9625

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The OWL aims to make money via a combination of viewership, which as you said is currently lower than desired, ticket sales, merchandise like the ones announced by Blizz, player streams, local team run tournaments etc... I'm not saying it's guaranteed to be a smash hit but it's very doable.

Now, APEX is a poor example since it's at general bad times for the west. The Grand Finals is at 5:00 am EDT Saturday morning and I'm getting up for that, but most people won't. The OWC qualifiers have been getting a decent amount of views for less than optimal time slots as well. I think Blizzcon viewership would be a better measuring stick to see how the scene is doing at full hype. If it's anything like last year we could see 100k+ numbers with Asian numbers hitting several hundred thousands, possibly even over a million.

Comparison to Rocket League is an odd one since the game is extremely different from Overwatch. FPS games will always be more niche than ones like RL, that may be why Blizz is working so hard to make this game appeal to casuals while also trying to get the eSports fanatics like us.

Should be an interesting 2nd half of the year either way, good or bad.

#51

remiska

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without viewers they wont earn thats it for this

popularity of esport realy isnt about how accessible it is i find mobas impossible to watch coz i neveer played them and i dont think anyone will understand them without playing them earlier and they are the most popular esport
(dota lol) cs go on the other hand is rather simple, you go and kill enemy, headhsots deal more dmg (obvieus) and thats how you win simple and easy and yet its little bit less popular then mobas (tho just a little bit)

i compared it to rocket league coz they both are very new esports and while rocket league already had a lot of realy big tournaments in overwatch we still wait and because of this viewership is actualy droping (season 3 of apex has less viewers then season 2)

#52

KuroiRyuu9625

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You might be right, I'm just questioning where you get the certainty to ascertain what you do. As I mentioned, yes, the league could fail, but seeing as the scene is so young we're low on empirical data and the league itself does not yet exist.

My point is that current viewership numbers may not be enough to determine the success or failure of what they're trying to accomplish. They very well could, there's no shame in admitting that the whole ecosystem could be collapsing, but given the amount of money going into it I can only assume that this void of information is hiding possibilities we can't come up with.

Basically I'm perplexed at how inflexible some parties on either side of the argument can be, when in essence they know nothing, or at the very least they may know much less than they seem to think they do.

#53

remiska

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i on the other hand dont understand this distinction of "the league" like wtf? its esport now and then, only difference will be the organizer of events, nothing else changes so why would viewership change? yea support from blizzard will help, but you can see how many viewers event all over blizzard website and game gets during owc

#54

KuroiRyuu9625

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The way I can see it happening is that "The League" is based on trying to attract both current and non overwatch fans through the use of localization.

People might be more inclined to care about this group of youngsters if they represent the area they live in. The age brackets is probably going to be from the teens to the mid/late 20s with older folks that already know about eSports making up the other generations.

I think the point is to hype this up to generate interest and build the local fan base with events and what not. "Come see your local Overwatch team play", and those that can't would follow from their computers instead. That way you'd have the current viewer base of Overwatch fans, local or otherwise, along with new local fans or people that just follow the team wherever they are from. People tend to care a bit more when there's more at stake or that they feel a connection to that thing.

Now, that's how I think it could work, or more precisely how I think Blizzard could be aiming to make it work, so take it with a large pinch of salt, probably large enough to cause kidney failure since I'm just speculating with no basis for any of this. But that's how I imagine they could want to grow their viewer base from what it currently is. I feel like I have to iterate this a lot, but I'm not saying it will succeed, I'm saying I can envision a case where it could, just like I can easily see this failing horribly and killing the scene where it stands. Something some people seem to be unable to do for some reason.

I'll say it again but what I'm concerned with is the ecosystem outside of the league, contenders and the open division. Because I doubt we want Blizz to run literally everything Overwatch in the west. But that's just my unlicensed opinion.

#56

remiska

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well, "the area" is gona be preaty small compared to country so owc should have more viewers then owl will have

#57

KuroiRyuu9625

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You do understand the concept I'm trying to explain right? It feels like you're just looking to answer back without acknowledging the other side.

#58

remiska

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no you just dont understand that owc has a lot of what was promised from owl: "big" lans, localization, backing "your" team its supported and promoted all over website game and social media, has great production quality, top teams (a lot of the players will be 100% sure in owl) and it still is not that popular

i see too many people stuck on some dream that now its just some random games on internet but when owl apears we will have top teams full stadiums, milions of viewers and so on but the thing is not much will change from viewers perspective and thats wjat determins how many viewers are. There will be pretty much same teams and players, same casters same production quality as during owc (its good and there will be some changes obvieusly but not significant for most of the viewers) and lets be serious they will not fill the stadiums (lets be optimistic and say in the beggining) so localization and home team wont matter that much, we live in the age of internet and people in esport dont realy care about "home" team that much. In "real" sport it worked because back in the days not many people had money to travell to other city or country to watch teams, and there was far less to do then go to home stadium and watch people play not so more now. Im for example fan of rogue (or more accuratly akm) but i live on the other side of the globe so ill never go to vegas, its not my "home town" team but its the team ill follow

also my argument about owc beeing "localized" by a country so it should have more viewers when 2 countries play then when 2 teams from some city play is very true and serious

not sure if you noticed but i keep track of viewers during owc qualifiers and share some thoughts about it on forum and when specific countrys team play their national stream gets nice boost of viewers the biggest ive seen was during china vs thailand match for qualification to blizzcon china got 15k (peak) instead of 2k and thailand 12k (peak) instead of also 2k so overral it was 23k increas WHEN 2 NATIONAL TEAMS PLAY ONLY 23K VIEWERS FROM BOTH THESE COUNTRIES GOT ON STREAM

edit: ok its not like i belive owl will fail, just what blizzard is and was duing is not viewer friendly, not letting tournaments take place (even so popular and well established as monthly melee) so i stay sceptic towards owl
the thing that triggers me is some stupid belife and when owl starts it will be something completly different then is now, it wont be for the most part

continue thread →

#55

lirreboss

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In the darkest moment in OW tread light slowly.
To all NON owl players, don't give up!

#65

penda

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remiska why you always getting into arguments

#66

remiska

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thats how i am (why i reach for stars so slowly :'( )

also lets call it discussion

#70

Pixelfish

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I have come to two conclusions.

One, KuroiRyuu is absolutely stellar at debating AND winning debates.
Two, Remiska is most definitely a brother, accomplice, or clone of Robokun.

#74

remiska

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none convinced the other side so none won this discussion (and frankly you cant convince anyone on the internet so its preaty much impossible to win discussions)

i represent minority of over.gg users that are not necessarily negative but sceptical towards owl and not sure you noticed but over.gg doesnt like when someone doubts "the great owl that will save esports and which everyone on the planet will watch" (kappa)

while kuroi represents people who are positive towards it but he also lost his temper at times ("you're not able to comprehend what I'm saying") so lets not make a saint out of him but i think even if we dont agree we have a nice discussion going on and for the internet standards pretty civilized

#78

KuroiRyuu9625

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I think you misunderstand something, which is why I said you don't comprehend the message i'm trying to convey. I'm not Pro or Anti Overwatch league, I've said it many times so that relatively proves my point.

You pointed out an issue with the current state of affairs that the league wold fail to fix and thus fail itself. I elaborated on a way in which I thought it could work in regards to that issue but also clearly stated that it was pure speculation in this debate.

I'm still not convinced you understood what I meant to say, or maybe you just din't care to, but all I've said have been opinions and speculation and i'm pretty clear on that. Unlike what you seem to think I can be convinced when
an appropriate amount of verifiable information is brought forth. Right now we don't have much to go on so you're right that no one can truly be convinced. I'm not leaning towards either way but with the general anti OWL rhetoric going around I find it more challenging to think of way it could work, not necessarily that it will.

Intent is a difficult thing to convey when written, so I read all comments very carefully to make sure I've understood them and I might be wrong but it din't feel like I was given the same courtesy back in this case.

#71

Pixelfish

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To touch on this discussion however;

I don't think a lot of the Overwatch community are really understanding what the league is, and what the league means for Overwatch and eSports in general. It's not a tournament that just happens, but a full ecosystem and franchise that Blizzard is trying to build, and push eSports into the mainstream. The prize pool being this high in the first year only shows the confidence that Blizzard and Activision have in the league. You really think they would go for something with this big of a scope without preparing for everything? Advertising, salaries, player unions, team contracts, LAN locations, in game items, viewership numbers, etc. The list goes on and on for what OWL needs to cover in order to be successful; and in fact, Blizzard have addressed all of this.
Remiska, you talk about how the WC hasn't gotten so many viewers, but its because it's simply not on the same scale of the OWL. This years World Cup is kind of Blizzard's preview to get people excited about Overwatch eSports by instilling a sense of national pride in different countries that are competing. The USA and Poland stages will unquestionably get more viewers (due to better time zones), and I agree with KuroiRyuu that Blizzcon could break 1 million.
Honestly, everything is on the right track. I think we all need to take a step back, breathe, and just let it happen.

#72

remiska

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i dont doubt they will build great tournaments and ecosystem but as i already said its not how great the production and prize pools are if viewers dont enjoy overwatch as an esport (and blizzard actions havent helped it) it all doesnt matter thats my main point

and why should owl give bigger sense of pride? in owc you are even involved (well kinda) in chosing who represents your country also i think most people dont feel special conection with the city they live in but nearly everyone does with the country they are from

wait for poland and usa qualifiers ill make thread about viewership like for the last 2 but there is no way blizzcon breaks 1 milion, last year it was 100k-200k and these years qualifiers peaked at around 80k (shanghay) and 70k (sydney) its not that much

#75

Pixelfish

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I hope you know that entire post of mine was sarcastic. I realize it's a discussion, and I'm all for discussions, doesn't mean I can support a side though.
And the second statement I made about you being Robokun's relative is true, right?

#76

remiska

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actualy dont even know whos that (im realy bad with names and thus also nicks)

#77

Pixelfish

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He's a guy who I always have huge debates with about pessimism and optimism about the OWL in general. He's my arch nemesis.

#79

penda

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remiska: "it's pretty much impossible to win discussions"

I think it's safe to call it an argument

#80

remiska

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you can call it whatever you want even 3rd world war

#81

KuroiRyuu9625

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I don't think the point of a discussion is to be won. It's the exchange of opinions and ideas, as long as you don't dismiss one side it keeps being a discussion otherwise yes, it devolves into an argument.

#82

Pixelfish

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3rd world war LUL

#83

penda

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Pixelfish won the discussion
Congrats

#84

Pixelfish

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I...i won?

"MOM! MOOOMM! You won't believe what I just won! So it's called over.gg, and there's this guy named remiska..."