Overwatch League will soon see two new names being added to the roster, one from Atlanta, Georgia in the US and another from Guangzhou, China. Both teams will officially start in Season 2, with questions of competitiveness already asked.
After all, a full season of proper Overwatch League carnage is no small feat for any team and many suspect that the new guys will have a tough time trying to compete with the current roster. However, neither Blizzard nor Atlanta Esports Ventures (AEV), who are the owners of the Atlanta based team, think this will be the case.
AEV president and CEO Paul Hamilton stressed that the only disadvantage is that they've got a lot to do before they're a proper Overwatch competitor. "But we've also been able to watch what's worked and what hasn't", Hamilton added, pointing out that it all balances itself out to the point where the team are at no "major disadvantage".
Head honcho of Activision Blizzard's esports department, Pete Vlastelica, echoed the sentiment, saying that the upcoming finals are perhaps the best example of how this is not the case. "If you look at these finals, one of the teams is a long-standing endemic organisation - Cloud9, that's behind the London Spitfire - and the other group is Comcast", which is more like AEV than Cloud9.
Vlastelica noted that many people were sceptical one Comcast Spectacor was announced as an OWL competitor with their Philadelphia Fusion. It's highly unlikely their scepticism is still existent though, seeing as how Fusion is going up against Spitfire in the upcoming OWL finals.
The yet-to be named Atlanta team is apparently focused on creating a well oiled and synergistic machine, instead of just going for star names and hoping they gel. There was even some talk about Atlanta curse, whereby the city hasn't had a proper sports winner since before the Olympics in 1996, but Hamilton disregarded this as fairy tales.
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"We're going to create a great deal of love between the city and our sports organization, and we're going to do everything we can do to win", Hamilton concluded.
