We often hear owl is the main source of income for overwatch through sponsors and franchise.
Each franchise is said to have paid around 20 million and add on top of that their player cost, support staff cost, content creator cost etc.
Now how do they get their money back.
The prize pool doesn’t cover their cost at less than 5 million, what are these franchises getting out of this.
Mainly advertising and some merchandising but mostly advertising. This is pro sports to a “T”. Think of your typical NBA star or Football star who pimps some brand… they do make a salary but real money is on endorsements.
Sponsorships and merchandise sales mainly.
If it wasn’t for sponsors etc so many low division teams for IRL sports would really suffer tbh
They don’t anymore 
They are never making that money back. Blizzard scammed them hard.
From what I can tell, they don’t. At least they won’t after so many sponsors have pulled out. I imagine that the vast majority of OWL funding came from big-name sponsors. Not to say that things like stream contracts and view $$$ is insignificant, but most free-to-watch content is funded by sponsors. This is why I think that OWL is almost definitely dead in the water. There is absolutely no way that Blizzard could possibly make a return on the many millions that go into OWL just off of merch sales and ad revenue alone.
Maybe if OWL dies, Blizzard will start trying to actually revive OW instead of trying to make it more “watchable”.