The viewership is way down.
Blizzard is charging a lot of money for a pass and a few basic skins ($30+ for an OWL Genji grey skin) to make some cash back, since they evidently are losing a lot of money paying players money they aren’t making in OWL sales.
I’m still a fan of OWL, but this is incredibly concerning for anyone who’s interested in the league, and surely for Blizzard, too.
People who do (or don’t) watch OWL, what are they doing wrong? Real answers only would be nice, but OWL threads tend to get quite the influx of trolls, so… you do you, forums.
Personally, I think they need to reevaluate start times. They start too late EST, and at an awkward/early time over in Europe. That’s not helping anything.
Also, the players being on different patches than us is just ridiculous. We adapt, we want to see OWL adapt on the fly. Put in new Hanzo. Throw those new patches in. Do something. Stop being scared.
OWL is beginning to look like a massive failure, and I’m not sure it’ll last more than one more season… Blizzard’s invested, but it’s not too late to just take the loss after next season and admit the whole thing was a forced mistake.
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Someone’s drinking the Mark Cuban Kool Aid.
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I could see why a 6 hour, 4 nights a week regular season schedule would be off-putting to some.
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I’ve been saying this for weeks. This isn’t my first thread regarding it, either.
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They’re adding a lot of teams next season at a price nearly double what they were with buyers lined up around the block. OWL flourishing, you’re clearly divorced with reality on this one.
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1300 bits for a mercy skin
2600 bits for a genji skin
yea … i dont wanna support this kind of greed.
i bought the mercy pink skin… but this was for charity. so i didnt mind the money.
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Well until you hear team owners complaining about losing money I’m pretty sure it will continue. Not that I really care either way I just watch it for the tokens tbh
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Adding more teams isn’t going to help anything. That’s Blizzard putting more money into OWL — that’s not based on demand. Viewership and interest in OWL is at an all-time low, that’s a fact.
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well fortnite league will also hurt OWL…
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Ok, I’m not with the OP but how in the world can you claim OWL is flourishing? There are individual streamers on twitch that pull more viewers than OWL.
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This. If I was an investor looking at OWL I would go “Why should I spend millions of dollars on your video game thing when a single person gets better viewer numbers than you?”
Look, it’s good that some of you enjoy it but please realize that 100k viewers per stream on a multimillion dollar esport is not a good size. CS:GO and DotA 2 gets around 500k viewers.
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I’d expect some pretty big changes in season two. They need to change things up.
Including, actually offering decent benefits to All Access users.
Who actually cares about the Q&A? Virtually nobody.
That’s every day, or just for major tournaments? Also keep in mind that there has been exactly one worthwhile match to watch this stage, and the viewership reflects how boring the rest are.
You didn’t see the viewership skyrocket when Fuel started winning against Boston, a match nobody expected to be worth seeing?
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This happens when the players aren’t the ones who spark the idea, and all player-made tournaments are snuffed out because Blizz wants full control over the competitive aspect of the game.
They need to take a note from The International and let esports naturally develop in their game without going “Guess what? Y’Know this game that literally just got a ranked mode less than a year ago?! ESPOOOORT!” while dumping money into something people are just kinda lukewarm about.
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Major tournaments. Are you implying that OWL isn’t a major tournament? OWL has been pretty consistently getting 100k viewers give or take around 20k.
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It’s also pulling 100k eyeballs every night for four months.
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That’s what happens when your meta is already stale, the game stays horribly unbalanced, and patches take forever to come.
Also doesn’t help that the schedule is NA timezone and anyone who isn’t NA better have some coffee ready if they want to watch.
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The real reason i hate OWL is the mode in which is organised.
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Instead of following the “Clan” teams mindset in gaming culture, they went for City-teams like in traditional sports.
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OWL is primarily aimed at the US viewers with no interest in EU, even though a big part of the players are from EU.
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This is the core reason i hate OWL: It’s not a meritocracy.
NO NEW TEAM CAN ENTER IN OWL SOLELY BASED ON THEIR PERFORMANCE.
BAD TEAMS CAN’T DROP OUT OF THE LEAGUE (hint Shanghai Dragons).
You need the money of a big corporation or sponsors to buy a slot for your team. This is something completely unnacceptable.
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They’re saying the fact that there are people fulling willing to spend 40+ mil for a team next season shows OWL is thriving from a money stand point, which is the only thing that matters.
Viewership hovering around 100,000 viewers per match. Leagues above anything else on twitch that streams on a similarly consistent basis. It’s groundbreaking in every sense of the word. Nothing to see here. Another OWL doomsday thread
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My biggest issue is the camera work. They spend way too much time following a single character FPS view, which makes it hard to see what’s going on a lot of the time. The free floating camera needs much more use.
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