[ENG] OWL 2020 : Year of the Rooster, and of Change !

Rooster Club
Nov 5 · 3 min read
BlizzCon 2019 — Watchpoint Season Preview with Jonathan Spector (Senior Product Director — OWL)

You might've been too busy cheering for SoOn and Team France to keep track of all the announcements coming out of BlizzCon and that’s quite normal ! No worries, the Rooster Club is here to catch you up on what you might’ve missed. Here’s an article on OWL 2020 and the changes coming to the league format… Buckle up, it’s going to be a wild ride !

First off, a quick reminder of what we already knew coming into BlizzCon. The league’s been separated into two “Conferences” called Atlantic and Pacific, which are both separated into two “Divisions” — respectively North and South and East and West. The one we’re interested in is Atlantic North Division, composed of :

  • Boston Uprising,
  • London Spitfire,
  • New York Excelsior,
  • Toronto Defiant
  • And of course, our favorite roosters : Paris Eternal !

In total, there will be 52 homestands (2 minimum per team, Paris will host 3 in April, May and June). They’ll happen on week-ends only, with the schedules adapting to local markets. This’ll add up to a total of 28 matches for each team. The format changes as well : no more stages, there’ll only be one set of playoffs, at the end of the season. The All-Stars’ll be sticking around too, hosted in the middle of the season — more on that below.

Now that we’re all caught up, here’s the real news !

First off, there’s going to be a new mid-season tournament happening, running alongside All-Stars. The 4 best teams in the league will “duke it out” for your greatest pleasure. 2 conference leaders (based on results from week 1 to 10) and 2 “wild cards” (no more details on how these are selected) will face-off.

Next up is the regular season match format. No more quad-maps, we’re going first to 3 maps now ! If you’re a little confused about what that’ll look like, check the 2019 playoffs. The main take-away from this is that you’ll no longer hear casters repeat “every map matters” with varying degrees of conviction. 3–0 and it’s over. This is going to lead to a mild shake-up of the map orders as well. Control stays as the first map, to avoid any defense/attack advantage. After, the map order’ll be rotated between escort, assault or hybrid, to ensure all map types continue getting equal play. If need be, maps 5–6–7 will be control, to serve as tie-breakers.

This’ll also lead to an expansion of the map pool — they’ll keep swapping them around regularly, still 3 escort-hybrid-assault, but KOTH lovers rejoice, all 5 control maps will be in the pool all season long !

The playoff format will stay the same as this year, with 8 teams qualified for a double elimination bracket. Top 6 qualify automatically, top 7 to 12 go through a single elimination play-in tournament for the last 2 spots. We don’t have any info yet on where the playoffs or Grand Finals will happen.

We’re sure you’ve all been wondering about Overwatch 2 and how it’ll impact the league… The news is out, no mid-season shake-up or new map-type inclusion. OW2 will eventually be included into the competition in the long term, but it’s not quite ready yet.

The league is also working on their broadcasting plan for next year, so no news quite yet on how we’ll be able to watch the games — the priority however, remains to make it accessible to as many fans as possible ! Nevertheless, we can wonder how they’ll overcome certain challenges… like the fact that Twitch is unavailable in China.

Finally, some teasing for the upcoming years… the Overwatch League isn’t quite done growing yet : the goal on the long term would be to reach 28 teams ! Which city would you like to see represented next ?


Find the Rooster Club on Twitter and tell us what you think about these new announcements ! Are you excited for the 8th of February and Paris vs. Toronto ?

Rooster Club

Written by

Emblématique groupe de Supporters de Paris Eternal en Overwatch League. Venez nous rejoindre sur Twitter @Rooster_Club !

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