The plight of EU Overwatch League fans has long been ignored by the OWL and Blizzard; How a total of 29 countries out of 45 in the EU including the UK have been mentioned in the comments under a Tweet asking for European fans to let their voices be known. The European fanbase has once again been let down when it comes to participating in OWL events. Here are the responses to a few questions by EU OWL fans.
Ever since the 2018 Inaugural Season, European fans have been hoping for an offline event. Especially when they got the Paris Eternal as their second EU team next to the London Spitfire in Season 2. The chance of any events happening then doubled. Finally in 2020 with two LAN homestead events in Birmingham, UK and Paris, France it was about to happen. As everyone knows those were cancelled due to COVID-19. Now it’s 2023 and the hope of a LAN event is nearly gone, as the OWL is back to only having one European team. The OWL has been neglecting the European Fanbase as a whole when it comes to League stream times, giveaways and being unable to buy team merchandise because there are no shipping options to the EU.
When sending out a tweet asking European fans to show their voices and post a comment about what country they are in, many of them took this chance to speak up. Within an hour it had 200+ replies and roughly 35 DMs of people sharing their country and voicing their thoughts on the matter. As of the time of publication, the top three countries are France, the UK and Germany making up between 14% and 25% of those comments. This shows that even though this is a small part of the EU community, those who are on Twitter, are definitely out here. A lot of the replies to the question, of whether they are willing to travel to one of the top 3 countries, are positive. Most fans are willing to travel to see a LAN event.
One of them said ”At this point, I just want to see a live game I’ve been watching since Season 1. I really want to feel the energy of seeing my favorite players in real life.” European fans want to feel the thrill and the vibe of being in a venue, share their love for the game with other fans and see their favourite teams and players play live on stage at a time zone that’s actually appropriate for them.
For the first 2 seasons, the EU had pretty bad game times. Starting at 9 or 10 pm, GMT +1 or +2 depending on if DST is active or not. On the weekends and 12 or 1 am on weekdays with the matches ending at 6 am at the latest.
With the start of the 2021 season, changes happened because of COVID-19. The format changed and the league was split into 2 regions. This made it even harder for EU fans to watch and keep up. The times are also split in two, starting at 9 pm for NA and 10 am for APAC, ending around 5 am and 4 pm respectively. While these times might sound good, for a lot of EU fans it’s still a rough schedule.
One fan said ‘’With university, homework and my job I am unable to watch most of the NA games and rarely catch any of the APAC action’’. They added that they feel unseen within the OWL community. ‘’We know it is impossible to consider everyone, but it’s discouraging to keep watching like this. Even buying a team jersey for EU fans is impossible compared to earlier seasons’’. EU fans know that they have reasonable times, however, this doesn’t make them feel less seen or heard within the global OWL community.
On April 29, 2023 the official OWL account tweeted about the casters and desk for the upcoming season. These tweets contained only the NA and Korean desk and casters. There was no Tweet with French casters to be seen. When asking the French fans what they thought of this, most of them gave the same answer. ‘’We lost the feeling of being part of a community we have been a part of since Season 1’’.
The follow-up question of whether this might also have to do with French fans having a harder time speaking or understanding English there was a resounding no, it really had to do with the loss of the French casters. One source said that ”When an official cast is up, no content is translated, no localization whatsoever, and no possibility to market the broadcast [to a wider audience in the EU], making it nearly impossible to be something interesting for an anchor on the field.” The French casters had almost no direct communication with the OWL officials.
The OWL has done nothing to make it easier for the French casters. ”Communications with the NA, EU and French Overwatch social media accounts sometimes had a delay of 3-4 days. And were mostly done on the American, PST, timezone”. There were many thoughts on the change to YouTube within the European community. ”I think as a whole, the OWL needs to change completely, let down the city-model. Go towards Riot-inspired formats with a European Zone and let historical esports teams invest to make the flame burn once again”.
All the EU teams with influence, like gentlemates, Karmine Corp, and Solary are from Twitch. However, having no official French casters doesn’t mean French OWL fans don’t have any coverage at all. For the Overwatch World Cup (OWWC) the French casters have come together to cover this event independently for the French fans.
While in the beginning seasons of the League fans were able to buy player jerseys for about 70$. This was including shipping to the EU. These days a jersey is 99$ but no shipping to the EU. Merchandise was actually not localized. According to a source, ”they tried to set up a warehouse shop, it worked for a short period, but everything went back to the US”.
A disappointed fan said that, ”The option of shipping isn’t there in the first place. So we can’t even make the decision ourselves”. It shows appreciation that OWL teams are concerned over the possible added money that import tax could add. However when discussing with other fans, all agreed they would like to have the choice of paying that extra fee in exchange of getting their favourite team’s merchandise.
What do EU OWL fans want? LAN events, watch parties, accessible merch shops with decent shipping and being able to join Giveaways? Or do they simply want to be heard and included within the OWL community? From all the responses, it is a combination of it all. An event that is hosted by the only European team they have left, or a major event like the Mid-Season Madness is the dream. This is the answer most have given when asked what they want the most. Does the EU fanbase still have a chance to see some live OWL action? The fanbase is bigger than many may think! They definitely won’t give up hope for the 2024 season to have a LAN event in France, the UK or Germany.
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