To many the Overwatch League has been very successful in its first season. Teams have been fairly even, viewership is trending upwards, and overall production has been very good. With stage 3 ending and only stage 4 remaining Blizzard has announced that they will be hosting their season one final at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
The first-ever Overwatch League Grand Finals will be held at @barclayscenter in Brooklyn, New York!
Capture History this July 27 & 28 https://t.co/1h33mlZVrg pic.twitter.com/c3wRzwAZCT
— Overwatch League (@overwatchleague) May 9, 2018
To say this is much bigger than what Overwatch League fans are used to would be an understatement. The Blizzard Arena holds around 450 people while the Barclays Center holds 19,000. With a bigger venue it will be interesting to see how many tickets go on sale and how quickly it will sellout, if it does.
This announcement comes on the heels of Riot announcing that their North American LCS Finals would be held in Oakland California at Oracle Arena. What this showcases is that, at least for now, many major esports will continue to use NBA arenas for their major events.
It is possible that this is due to the fact that so many groups and individuals from the NBA are involved with esports or that their venues are currently about the perfect size for a major esports event. Oracle Arena hold 20,000, TD Garden (NALCS Fall 2017 Finals) holds, 19,580, and Staples Center holds 21,000. All of these venues have been used for esports events before and hold about the same amount of people.
What this shows is that this is most likely the crowd size expected for major esports events these days. It will be interesting to see how this shifts in the future.
Stage 4 of the OWL starts next week as teams battle for the final season 1 playoff spots.
Tickets for the Grand Finals will go on sale May 18th. The event will be on July 27th and 28th.
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