Coming up on its third season which begins in February of this year, the Overwatch League currently appears go be going through a few new growing pains that some are finding troubling. Namely, five members of the league’s broadcasting talent have chosen not to re-sign contracts with the league for the upcoming season.
Desk host Chris Puckett and casters Semmler and DoA left their reasons relatively vague. Meanwhile caster MonteCristo and host Malik Forté both expressed unhappiness with the new contracts that they were being offered. For the first time since the first of these departures, a representative of the Overwatch League has responded to fans and experts’ concerns with the loss of some of its previous seasons’ key talent.
OWL’s senior director Jon Spector, in a statement to The Esports Observer, first expressed his gratitude to the members of the broadcasting team that have chosen not to return. The broadcast talent in the league’s 2018 and 2019 seasons, Spector argues, were the best in all of esports, and the combination of new and returning talent that will be featured in OWL’s upcoming season aims to clear that same high bar.
Spector then promised, in what The Esports Observer notes is a rare public statement from the Overwatch League, that there are new announcements regarding next season’s broadcasting team on the horizon. While he kept specifics vague, the casting talent next season will both aim to appeal to a more international audience as well as reintroduce faces familiar to the Overwatch League in a new context.
All five of the casters that have announced their departure first made names for themselves in other esports leagues. This was part of what made investing in the league’s early seasons enticing for those who funded its first slate of teams— that some of the featured casters were already established as some of the best in esports. It’s worth noting that popular personalities returning to the league next season (barring additional departures before the season begins) like Uber and Sideshow have worked mostly if not solely doing Overwatch commentary.
The Los Angeles Gladiators will face off against the Vancouver Titans at the Esports Stadium in Arlington, Texas on February 8th to kick off the league’s third season. Whether or not these high profile departures effect the league’s success will become clearer as the season progresses.
Source: The Esports Observer
