New York City — The importance of EGames in the national youth culture took huge leap up with the monster Overwatch League’s first Grand Final beginning tomorrow at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, NY. If the venue and city aren’t enough, the finale winner walks away with $1 million payoff while the runner up pockets $400k.
Helping give the Overwatch Grand Finals more push and importance is the relationships forged with television and online broadcasting giants like ESPN, ABC, the Disney channels and streaming services. Like any sports league, gaining a large number of unique viewers for the upcoming finals is an important task. Media coverage for the Overwatch League has skyrocketed in the last few days leading up to the finals.
The monumental jump by the Overwatch League onto the ESPN, ABC, and Disney platforms enables these Egames to now be potentially viewed by a whole different type of audience instead of on the limited streaming services such as Twitch, For a long time viewing esports as an actual “sport” was taboo. With deals like this and the growth of games the barrier between normal viewer and gamer is beginning to break down.
2018-07-20 / Photo: Robert Paul for Blizzard Entertainment
The Overwatch Grand Finals starts off with the Philadelphia Fusion facing off against Cloud9’s London Spitfire. The first match on Friday can be seen on ESPN at 4PM PT. Saturday’s second and third matches will be featured on Disney XD. There will also be a full recap of all matches airing on ABC Sunday, July 29 at 12PM PT
All the Grand Finals matches will be streamed on Twitch. Even if you have no interest or understanding of the game this Final will be worthwhile to watch. Esports are not going away, they are here to stay.
