The Overwatch League is switching coasts for the inaugural season’s grand finals event, which is set to take place in New York.
So far, matches have been held at Blizzard Arena in Los Angeles. The league’s regular season ends on June 17 and post-season matches will then kick off on July 11. After that, Blizzard Arena will be host to a six-team playoff tournament to determine which two teams will head to New York.
Those two final teams will face off in July at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
“We want this to be a really special moment,” Overwatch League commissioner Nate Nanzer said to Dot Esports. “There’s only going to be one inaugural season finals over. We thought New York made a ton of sense – it’s really just a global city.”
The grand finals will see a bit of a twist for the Overwatch League: The first team to win the best of five matches will win the top prize. The event will start on July 27 at 8:00 p.m. ET and features a $1.4 million prize pool. Teams are also competing for the chance to be crowned Overwatch League season champions.
But that’s not all. According to Nanzer, the grand finals event will be a “really cool party” for fans. Brooklyn Sports and Entertainment executive vice president of programming Keith Sheldon assures that the building will be very engaging for fans and that a “week of Overwatch activations” will be taking over New York.
“We love Overwatch so much because it’s global,” Sheldon said. “It’s about introducing a global community to the Barclays Center, We’re celebrating this global community of gamers, the best gamers in the world.”
In fact, the Overwatch League’s following spreads over much more than just the cities that are represented by the league’s teams. Each team is associated with a city, but these connections have become largely superficial at this point. Teams fan bases extend internationally, which has inspired a few teams to come up with ways for these large communities to interact.
Houston Outlaws and San Francisco Shock are each teaming up with Linden Lab to create VR-driven fan spaces for their communities. Using the company’s Sansar technology, fans will be able to interact with players and fans while watching Overwatch League matches. It’s basically professional Overwatch’s virtual version of going to your buddy’s house with some friends to watch the basketball game.
Houston’s virtual clubhouse will be dubbed “the Hideout,” while San Francisco is creating a VR esports arena, aptly called “the Epicenter.” Both spaces will be revealed at real-life events in Houston and San Francisco later this month and will be available on PC and VR. Fans will even be able to purchase branded skins and team merchandise at these virtual hubs.
“We’ve seen a real need in the esports market for a deeper, more engaging fan experience – something that can go beyond normal spectatorship to really draw people in,” Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg said in a statement. “We feel social VR is perfectly poised to meet this need.”
Both VR spaces will be open in time for the grand finals in July. For fans that wish to attend the event in real life can purchase two-day tickets starting May 18 at 10:00 a.m. ET through Ticket Master or the Barclays Center website. According to Blizzard, one-day tickets will be sold “at a later date,” subject to availability.