Dafran on OWL’s move to YouTube: “It’s a scary time for Overwatch League”

The leap to YouTube could spell disaster for the league.
Photo by Robert Paul via Blizzard Entertainment
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With just two weeks before the Overwatch League’s third season, Activision Blizzard dropped a bombshell of an announcement on fans: The league has packed its bags and is moving to YouTube. Not everyone welcomed the change with open arms, and former pro Daniel “Dafran” Francesca voiced his own hesitations about the move on today’s stream.

Dafran suggested there may be a possibility the Overwatch League could extend its reach to broader audiences with the transition to YouTube, but the streamer remains skeptical about the league’s leap to the platform.

“We might get surprised,” the streamer said. “There’s a lot of normies on Youtube…There’s also a big chance that the Overwatch League is just going to die completely. Yeah, Overwatch League might just completely die, dude…And when I mean dead, I mean 50k viewers.”

The Overwatch League’s swap to YouTube isn’t the only change coming in season three, however. The league will hit the road in February with teams hosting games in their own cities. The list of broadcast talent has also undergone a near complete renovation; Christopher “MonteCristo” Mykles, Chris Puckett, and Malik Forté are just three members from last year’s broadcast team to have parted ways with the league ahead of the upcoming season.

Related: Why are so many Overwatch League casters leaving?

It would be an understatement to say the league has a lot to prove this upcoming year—and the move to YouTube could help make or break the outcome.

“It’s a scary time for Overwatch League,” the streamer continued. “The move to YouTube is just, dude, monkaS. We’ll see.”

Activision Blizzard revealed its multi-year partnership with Google earlier in the week, which includes exclusive streaming rights for the Overwatch League, Hearthstone events, and the new Call of Duty League. The exact length or terms of the deal were not mentioned, but the deal will also see Google Cloud become “the preferred provider for Activision Blizzard’s game hosting infrastructure.”

The Overwatch League returns for season three on Feb. 8 with the series between the Toronto Defiant and the Paris Eternal at 12pm CT.


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Author
Rachel Samples
Managing Editor. In 2018, Rachel graduated from the University of Texas with a bachelor’s in Rhetoric and Writing and first entered the esports industry in the same year. Her favorite games include fast-paced FPS titles, deckbuilders, and the entire Mass Effect franchise. Need any calibrations?