First Weekend Outside California Shows Power of Geolocation for Overwatch League
byMax Miceli
Credit: Dallas Fuel
Dallas Fuel, Houston Outlaws
For the first time in Overwatch League history, a weekend of regular season games was hosted outside of the Blizzard Arena in Burbank, California, as the Dallas Fuel hosted a shortened weekend of action at the Allen Event Center.
Coming into the weekend, the excitement for the league's first-ever homestand was made tangible as the event's 4,500 tickets sold out for each day, and numerous sponsorship activations were unveiled.
While only a limited number of fans were able to experience the action live from Dallas, any experienced OWL viewer could tell that this weekend was different.
The broadcast itself was nearly identical to every other OWL weekend, just at a different venue. However, the atmosphere Dallas provided showed just how well the league's attempts at geolocation have worked.
Even though every team had played all of its regular season matches in California, the Texas faithful showed up ready to cheer for the Fuel, and their cross-state rivals, the Houston Outlaws received a mixture of vigorous boos and cheers from those who made the drive.
The sheer size of the venue added another layer of depth to the experience for players and fans as well. The event's 4,500 sellout might not be large for some traditional sports' standards, but for comparison, that's 10 times the capacity of Blizzard Arena.
Tickets for the event ranged from $35-145 USD for a single day, and 77% of ticket buyers were from Texas, according to a release, leading to Fuel games that had more intense cheering and jeering than any regular season matches thus far in the league's history.
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"The amazing passion from the fans made this weekend truly special," said Mike Rufail, Envy Gaming owner and CEO in a release. "We made history at the Dallas Fuel Homestand Weekend and showed the world why esports is one of the fastest growing forms of sports competition and consumable entertainment that fans of all ages from all over the world can enjoy."
Though the environment was everything the league could have asked for, the weekend wasn't without its problems. During the first match of the weekend on Saturday, a power outage stopped play for more than 40 minutes. However, the technical difficulties came following a traffic accident that damaged equipment. The issue wasn't an error by the league or the Allen Event Center.
Additionally, the shorter two-day, eight-game format for the weekend made viewership on Twitch atypical for OWL. This season, weekends had typically had four days of games starting on Thursday evening with 16 games strung across the weekend.
The more condensed weekend saw fewer teams play, but viewership didn't hurt from it. While a long break in action on Saturday hurt viewership pushing its average concurrent figure to 107K, Sunday, which was headlined by the "battle for Texas," had a much stronger 120K CCV on the main OWL Twitch channel.
As the Overwatch League looks to continue pressing geolocation, this first step in playing "home" matches has served as vital proof that geolocated branding of teams has, at least to some degree, stuck with consumers in a meaningful way.
Tags: dallasDallas Fuelhouston outlawsNorth AmericaOverwatchOverwatch Leagueowltexasunited states
Max Miceli
Max is a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill graduate with a degree in business and sports journalism. He joined The Esports Observer as a freelance writer while working as a staff writer for SportsBusiness Daily. Max began covering viewership and streaming platforms for TEO after reporting on the development of Fortnite esports in the summer of 2018, and his experience in gaming also includes expertise in titles like World of Warcraft and Overwatch.