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It’s that time of year again. The Hangzhou Spark kicked off April Fools’ Day today in commendable fashion after revealing the franchise adopted a new name and marine mammal as its mascot. Sparklers, don’t worry—the franchise isn’t actually rebranding.
The Chinese Overwatch League team jumped in on the holiday fun by renaming itself the Hangzhou Seals, exchanging the railgun logo for a plump, cartoon seal. Next to the team’s new name, there’s a baby blue seal balancing a beach ball on its nose, and the electricity has been replaced by a few waves of water and a seal tail.
What’s even better about this witty April Fools’ Day joke is that the word for seal in Chinese, 海豹, has the same pronunciation as the word for poster, 海报.
Throughout stage one of the Overwatch League, the Spark became infamous for its series of weekly match posters on Twitter. The images illustrate the Spark’s mascot as it takes on other teams’ characters and shows the results for the matches of that week.
Related: Baptiste will be playable and Paris will be live in OWL Stage 2
The Overwatch League is set to return this Thursday for the second stage of the 2019 season. Stage two will look a little different compared to the first, however. A new map pool, playable support hero, and adjusted time schedule will appear when the games return with the series between the Philadelphia Fusion and the New York Excelsior.
