Koreans to C9?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Competitiveoverwatch/comments/6u22ry/c9_london_recruiting_korean_players/

This is very... confusing. The source doesn't seem so credible, so it's very possible that this is false.
But, why make it up? And if it's legit, I don't quite know how myself and other people are going to feel about it.

I know that the league represents something that is entirely international, but I feel there should be some sort of connection between a certain city and the people from that city that are going to be supporting them.

If C9 kept The Kittenz just for contenders, and imported a full Korean roster for the OWL just because Koreans are "better", how many people are going to really support London with a completely foreign roster that speaks little to no English? Doesn't matter at that point if C9 is a well known org.

I don't know if this is Alicus's decision (he's been against it in the past), so I'd be surprised and frankly, a little bit unhappy if this came to fruition. There can undoubtedly be foreign players on any team in any location, but there has to be some sense of locality in the league. Or maybe I'm wrong and bordering on controversial here.

Put it into perspective this way. If there ends up being a Sydney team, what would the Australian fans think if Sydney decided to buy out LW Blue and have them represent the city? Obviously they'd be very successful in the league, but does it really seem like "Team Sydney?" Not really.

I'm just hoping that the majority of the league isn't all mostly Koreans. I want it to be equally international, and with rumors also about Boston just buying out Panthera, I hope it doesn't fully go down this path.

As one more example- I'm a New Yorker, (and half Korean) so I'll be cheering for the New York team. However, if New York buys out a full Korean roster, I'm honestly not going to be happy.

Very surprising to me. Not in the sense that it would be a bad decision for competition (I don't think Laser Kittenz can compete with the top owl teams) but for the marketability reasons you laid out. Plus, crafting a roster from spare pieces of Koreans as they're trying will be REALLY difficult unless the OWL spot attracts people from big name teams or they have some super dedicated korean analysts on board.

I'm sure there's a strong chance the source isn't credible, and that it is fake. But at the same time I feel like there's a possibility that this happens, and I'm trying to convey points that this wouldn't be good for the league.

Update: Based on information from TISrobin311, it seems as though the information is true. Apex pros have supposedly already talked it about on stream and some have already sent applications.

I would support a team from anywhere but maybe i am the minority.

If Overwatch fans are like traditional sports fans, then it won't matter where the players come from as long as they make the team good and bring success to their city. I can't say for sure Overwatch fans would be like that, but it's hard to imagine people not supporting the OWL champion simply because the roster is foreign. Just look at how Americans cheer for Envy despite not a single player being American.

I'm not saying fans won't necessarily support it- I just think it's smarter for the league to incorporate much more locality if they expect to grow their fanbases in certain locations. I don't think importing full Korean rosters for multiple teams in the league is a very smart move. Yes, the league is international, but it's also very NA-oriented. The first season is being run in NA for a reason, the majority of the viewers are going to be NA, and NA is the region that they want people to be attracted to.

In saying this all, I hope C9 doesn't end up having more than a few Koreans on the team. I just think owners will focus more on building winning teams the first couple of seasons than building marketable teams.

From a competition standpoint, we'd obviously see extremely high levels of play and that's great and all. But the OWL is aiming towards being more recognized by mainstream audiences. If more than 50% of players in the league are Korean, the sad truth is that a lot of potential viewers will be turned off. People aren't going to fill seats in Boston to watch Kongdoo Panthera unfortunately, but they will fill seats in San Francisco to watch NRG and other Americans (just a theoretical example).
I want the league to have elite competition, but I don't think the right way to solve that is to just create a massive inflow of Koreans, and it won't work well from a marketing standpoint.

I have to agree with Pixel on this one. The league itself will be international but I also believe that it needs to generate a good amount of local interest in the first few seasons. I'm not convinced non Overwatch fans, or possibly even casual fans would be as interested in a fully Korean team as they would NRG to take his example.

My impression is that building the viewer base would come first in the first few seasons and going for wins would come after its more stable and established.

Honestly very interested in seeing which direction most orgs decide to take.

I'll fill a seat in NYC to see whomever is playing. Although I'd prefer it to be the Immortals... :/

After reading a few posts on Inven.co.kr, it seems like C9 is aiming to have two full roasters: one with Koreans and one with non-Koreans. This is not from any official source. It's just what many people including some Korean pros are speculating. Since OWL allows maximum of 12 players per team (and C9 stated that they will be recruiting 6 Korean players), I think this might actually be what they are trying to do.

Whatever C9 is trying to do, I have to agree with what most people are saying above. For OWL to flourish to the extent that Blizzard seems to be aiming, teams should have some degree of locality. Boston team with the USA national team roaster will probably attract stronger fan base than the Kongdoo Panthera roaster, although I think KDP is probably a stronger team.

From what I have seen on Overwatch World Cup, I hoped to see one of the NA teams signing the players on the USA national team. Although they probably will not be the top team in the league, I think they have what it takes to be a decent team. Also, based on how well UK performed, I wished to see the London team sign eUnited and add a few more UK players.

We also have to keep in mind that teams won't be playing in their home region right away, they will be spending a season or two in Los Angeles. Without needing to sell tickets to a local audience just yet, the Overwatch League will be hoping to establish itself as the top-level of Overwatch competition while teams will be hoping to brand themselves as dynasties. If the Overwatch League takes from the top of APEX, APEX can serve a role as the Contenders of Korea rather than a direct competitor to Overwatch League. If a team is able to establish itself as the best team in Overwatch before it moves to its home area, it has already built a national/international brand. All of the American sports teams with large fanbases that disregard geography, with the exception of the Cubs (they had a large, national fanbase even before winning the World Series last year), either experience championship, dynasty-like success recently or historically. Despite the Cowboys or Bulls not even going to a Super Bowl or NBA Finals in 20 years, each team is among the most popular in their respective league.

Additionally, players will only be signing one year contracts in the first season. Only one team can win a title, and only two teams can go to the grand finals/championship in any given season. Once a team realizes during these first two seasons that their Koreans aren't enough to compete with another team's group of Koreans, they will likely begin building a team they not only believe can compete, but also is going to be more friendly to there locality. If you can't win, you build your brand with marketable players.

While I believe teams ultimately should have some sense of locality in their rosters, I don't think it's necessarily vital in the initial seasons. I think it's to be expected that the league will start with a large number of Koreans and once the number of teams increases, the level of competition internationally increases, and teams begin actually moving to home, OWL teams will naturally begin fielding players more local to their base of operations.

I'm sorry if it seemed I was bouncing around a lot there, but I had a lot of points I wanted to make sure I at least included.

You make good points, and I hope it ends up being the case that we see more players being signed that are much more congruent with whatever location their team resides.

However, just in my personal preference, I'd rather not have APEX relegated to a more contenders-like tournament. I'd rather the OWL of course take a few players here and there, but I like that APEX is an extremely high echelon of competition in Korea, a place that has already formed a massive overwatch ecosystem. To disrupt that pre-existing ecosystem just to move some players to the west because they're "better" I feel would be a bad move. Like I was saying earlier, despite being advertised as international, the Overwatch League is NA. Of course there will be teams in various cities outside of North America, but it's a NA company making an esport out of an NA game, catered towards an NA audience. While I of course love amazing overwatch competition, I think people would much rather see their favorite, more marketable players, even if the competition dials just slightly down, which in time, it may not even.

They could have those bandwagon fans who support them because they're good...
This would mean less loyal fans because the players aren't even close to native.
I mean if FNRGFE became the Colorado Corndogs or something, I would always root for them because they're a Colorado team that has all NA players. I think that there would be less London fans because they aren't from a country in the same region.

I believe that people will root for the city they feel attached to no matter (to a certain extent) who represents it.
Now, I agree that local players will build a fanbase far more quicker but if a foreign team is the clear better choice, then it'll take a bit longer. Remember, there's nothing that builds a fanbase like rivalries and some spicy shittalk/banter, and I'm pretty sure that OWL will provide us with plenty.

'If you can't win, you build your brand with marketable players.' Couldn't agree more with Scrubasaurus on this.
If C9 plans to build a second roster then more power to them in my opinion. I'm sure viewers would prefer the best level of competition there could be, and koreans, for now, embody top tier Overwatch level.

I don't think it's fair to describe the league as NA. While the developer is American and the league will certainly be NA-centric, everything that Blizzard has told us about the Overwatch League so far is that they envision a truly global league. The opening matches will be played in America and the majority of the teams are American (although they may shoot to make that only a plurality down the road, who knows!), but I believe Blizzard hopes to cater the league to an international audience. There is a lot of money that can be made from attracting the eyes of a nation as large as China and from a nation as esports hungry as Korea.

I do think you're right that it isn't as appealing to a casual viewer for a Korean on Korean matchup to happen, however. I also think it's equally detrimental if a team seems to dominate a league in its infancy, too. While APEX isn't the ideal conditions for a visiting Western team and we don't know how Rogue and EnVyUs matchup to the top of Korea on a more level playing field, we do know for certain that Kongdoo Panthera is capable of defeating Lunatic-Hai and their matches are almost always close. I do think it's important to have Kongdoo Panthera representing someone in the league to ensure that there is a competitive final (not saying a western team doesn't exist or can't be built to compete with LH, I am just saying that KDP is closer to a concrete guarantee of being a competitor to them).

In this sense, KR vs KR isn't too bad. We know that there will be rosters that will be mostly western and all-western existing in the first season of OWL. It is very likely Seagull will be on one of these rosters, and a lot more casual fans will watch when he does play like they do now. I imagine seeing a team defeat his, and that team's players specifically outplaying him, will pique the interest in a lot of those fans before a match between those two Korean teams ever takes place. I might just be overly optimistic, but I do believe that once fans are exposed to watching insane players play at a high skill level, they will be more interested in watching those players regardless of nationality. Although I might be reiterating what KuroiRyuu already said. If I am, I want to make it clear that I don't mean the OWL should be made up entirely of all-Korean rosters, anything more than 4 would definitely not look great and even that number is pushing it. Two to three is alright.

While I think owners will end up bringing more than just two all-Korean teams in their efforts to win right off the bat, as C9 looking for six Korean players seems to suggest, I don't want to see the league dominated by Koreans. Just as much as having only American franchises right off the bat would go against the vision of a global league, having one nationality dominating the playerbase of the league does the same thing. While I think it's not as detrimental in the first year as it would be once the teams actually move out of Los Angeles, I still think it has some detriment. Like Sideshow said, building a team off of Korean free agents would be really difficult, and if C9 does end up bringing in 6 Koreans to play for their team, I hope they struggle. Not out of malice, but as a way to show Koreans are beatable to casual fans.

In an ideal world, I think rosters composed in a similar way to that of Immortals or EnVyUs is best. Mixed nationality teams seem like they should be the natural conclusion for owners when it's a global league taking from the global playerbase. The teams should be trying to create chemistry with the best talent from around the globe. Of course language barriers get in the way of this, but hopefully that becomes less of a factor for eastern players that may spend a large amount of time in America for the opening seasons of the Overwatch League.

Scrubasaurus makes some really good points here.
I think this would be a good editorial to write about, and if anyone should write it, it should be you. It's an interesting topic to discuss more in detail because it's very important for the future of the league in general and how it's gonna grow. As long as you give me a shoutout for giving you the idea, of course. Kappa