A Florida sports team returns this weekend — in Overwatch. Here’s what you should know.
There will be professional sports once again in South Florida this weekend. No, there won’t be a game at AmericanAirlines Arena, Marlins Park or the BB&T Center. In fact, the actual game won’t exactly even take place in the Miami metropolitan area or any singular place in the United States.
The Overwatch League returns to action Saturday after a two-week break because of the COVID-19 outbreak and the Florida Mayhem, a team based out of Boca Raton, is set to face the Washington Justice in an online match, which will be streamed live on YouTube.
The exact logistics of how the match will be held are still being sorted out, but, barring another unforeseen disruption, a real live Florida team will be back in competitive action, albeit in esports.
“That’s kind of the void that we’re looking to fill,” said Ben Spoont, CEO of Misfits Gaming, which owns and operates the Mayhem. “Obviously, this is very trying times for a lot of people and a lot of industries. We as an industry in gaming can do our part to fill a void, to provide entertainment in the safety and comfort of people’s homes. It’s pretty cool what we have the opportunity to do.”
For a certain — quite large — portion of the population, esports has just been a part of normal life. Last year, the League of Legends World Championship peaked with 3.9 million concurrent viewers for a semifinal match. The 2019 Overwatch League Grand Finals averaged about 1.12 million viewers throughout the broadcast.
For the rest of the population, esports has mostly been an opaque, impenetrable world for the casual fan to enter. The most popular esports in recent history have been multiplayer-online-battle-arena games like “League of Legends” and “Dota 2.” It’s a massively popular genre, but played mostly be the more hardcore PC gaming community. “League of Legends” isn’t familiar to a console gamer more familiar with first-person shooters and open-world games.
Esports’ mainstream bid in Florida
Activision Blizzard’s hope with the Overwatch League — and now the Call of Duty League, too — was to remove some of the old-school opacity around esports. In 2016, Blizzard Entertainment announced the formation of a professional “Overwatch” league in the model of traditional American sports — there would be teams representing individual cities and states rather than teams with abstract names like Misfits, Team Liquid or Fnatic.
Misfits has had serious Florida ties since Spoont co-founded the organization in 2016. Spoont is a Boca Raton native and went to the Pine Crest School in Fort Lauderdale. Fellow South Floridians Laurie Silvers and Mitchell Rubenstein were co-founders with Spoont, and the Miami Heat and Orlando Magic are both sizable investors. Misfits quickly mobilized to found the Mayhem.
“Overwatch” was a logical entry point to push for a mainstream audience. The game, which has sold about 50 million copies since its 2016 release, has the bones of a first-person shooter, but blends it with the class-based, role-playing elements that have made multiplayer-online-battle-arena games so popular as esports. This year, all 20 teams have headquarters in their home city or state and matches moved from one central site in Los Angeles to a series of Homestand Weekends across the country. Florida’s first Homestand was originally scheduled for March 14 and 15 at the Watsco Center before the Mayhem postponed because of COVID-19 concerns.
“The major difference between traditional sports and esports,” Spoont said, “is our ability to adapt, to move events to be online versus in LAN.”
While the Heat’s, Miami Marlins’ and Florida Panthers’ seasons are all suspended indefinitely, the Mayhem will try to give South Florida its competitive fix.
“I think that we look to cast probably a little bit of a wider net as we look to expose our content,” Spoont said.
Spoont said his staff would have discussions with both the Heat and Magic about finding ways to reaching out those teams’ fan bases, and he even has considered reaching out to regional sports networks about finding ways for the Mayhem to provide fresh content in this dead period. Ahead of this season, the Mayhem even changed its red-and-yellow jerseys to a Miami Vice-style black and pink. Spoont expects the Mayhem to have the best-selling in-game skins this year.
Spoont acknowledged it could be difficult to convert a bunch of casual fans into OWL die-hards — “Overwatch” can be difficult to follow for those unfamiliar with the game — but there’s an even more mainstream gambit on the horizon.
Misfits also operates the Florida Mutineers of the Call of Duty League, which is in on a coronavirus-caused hiatus in its first season. This month, “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare” has been the second most viewed game on Twitch. When the Call of Duty League returns at a yet-to-be-announced date, the Mutineers will be representing Florida in one of the most popular activities in the world right now.
“We’re a sport and a game that’s well-known, and popular and people are going to be playing massive amounts of video games over the next months,” Spoont said. “We’re very humble about the fact that we’re going to provide a lot of entertainment for folks to consume and we’re excited to do that for South Florida, and having the Mayhem and the Mutineers represent them.”
This story was originally published March 25, 2020 at 4:10 PM.
