The 2018 Overwatch League Grand Finals was the first championship series of the Overwatch League (OWL), which took place July 27–28, 2018. The series was the conclusion of the 2018 Overwatch League playoffs and was played between the London Spitfire and the Philadelphia Fusion at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
London qualified for the playoffs as the fifth seed and defeated the fourth-seeded Los Angeles Gladiators and second-seeded Los Angeles Valiant in the playoffs. Philadelphia qualified for the playoffs as the sixth seed and defeated the third-seeded Boston Uprising and top-seeded New York Excelsior in the playoffs.
London Spitfire defeated Philadelphia Fusion in the first and second matches by scores of 3–1 and 3–0, respectively, to claim the title of Overwatch League Grand Finals Champions before a two-day attendance of 22,434 spectators.
Road to the Grand Finals The Grand Finals are the post-season championship series of the Overwatch League (OWL), a professional international esports league; the teams of the Grand Finals compete for a $1.4 million prize pool, where the winners receive $1 million. 2018 season was the first in OWL history and consisted of twelve teams in two divisions. Each team played 40 matches throughout the regular season. The playoffs were contested by six team – the two teams with the best regular season record in each division and the following four teams with the best regular season record, regardless of division.
At the conclusion of the regular season, both London and Philadelphia had regular season records of and were the fifth and sixth seeds, respectively, making them the bottom two teams to qualify for the season playoffs. The teams faced each other five times throughout the 2018 season, with one of those match-ups being the Stage 2 Semifinals – a game in which Philadelphia won. Overall, Philadelphia had beaten London in three out of their five match-ups.
London Spitfire
Cloud9 was awarded the London slot for an OWL franchise on August 10, 2017, and was later named the London Spitfire. Shortly afterwards, they disclosed their 12-player inaugural season roster, the maximum permitted, which would be entirely composed of South Korean players. The roster would mainly be an amalgamation of their current Cloud9 KONGDOO core and OGN's Overwatch APEX Season 4 champions GC Busan.
London started the season with a win to the a 3–1 victory over the Florida Mayhem and continued that winning trend through their first five games, resulting in the team's best win streak of the 2018 regular season. They would end Stage 1 of the 2018 Season with a record, earning them the third and final spot in the Stage 1 Playoffs. The team then became the first-ever stage playoffs champions, after achieving victories over the Houston Outlaws (3–1) and the New York Excelsior (3–2) in a reverse sweep. On March 7, midway through Stage 2, the Spitfire parted ways with head coach Lee "Bishop" Beom-joon for undisclosed reasons. The team finished Stage 2 with an improved record and attained another stage playoffs berth. However, they fell short to the Philadelphia Fusion in a 2–3 semi-finals series. As the season progressed, the Spitfire experienced a slight dip in form during Stages 3 and 4, resulting in a combined record of . Despite this relative downturn, the team's performance during the first half of the season secured their berth in the season playoffs as the fifth seed.
London lost their first postseason matchup against the Gladiators on July 11 by a score of 0–3 in the quarterfinals. The Spitfire turned it around the next two games against the Gladiators, winning in 3–0 sweeps in matches two and three and advancing the team to the semifinals. London won both games against the Los Angeles Valiant in the semifinals, winning 3–0 in match one and 3–1 in match two.
Philadelphia Fusion
On September 20, 2017, Overwatch developer Activision Blizzard officially announced that Philadelphia Flyers owner Comcast Spectacor had acquired the rights to the Philadelphia-based Overwatch League franchise; later the team name was revealed as the Philadelphia Fusion. Shortly afterwards on November 3, their roster was revealed.
Philadelphia's first regular season OWL match was a 3–2 victory against the Houston Outlaws on January 11. On January 25, Philadelphia upset the undefeated New York Excelsior, which marked New York's only loss in Stage 1. With a lack of preparation time heading into the regular season, the team struggled for form in Stage 1 and would only manage to notch six victories, missing the Stage 1 Playoffs. Using the stage-break to catch up on lost practice time and welcoming the arrival of Israeli DPS player Josue "Eqo" Corana, Stage 2 would prove to be a turning point for the team. After opening up the stage with back-to-back sweeps over the Boston Uprising and Florida Mayhem, the team would continue to impress and go on to achieve a much improved 3rd-place finish – good enough for a stage playoffs berth. During the Stage 2 Playoffs, the team surprised many after defeating heavily favored Stage 1 champions London Spitfire in the semi-finals, however a finals match-up with the New York Excelsior would prove a juggernaut too much as the Fusion would fall short in a hard-fought 5-map match. Heading into the final match of Stage 3 on May 5, the Fusion needed a win over the Los Angeles Valiant for a shot to claim the 4th seed in the Stage 3 playoff bracket. However, the Valiant proved too much to handle, as they defeated the Fusion by a score of 3–2 and claimed the 4th seed for their own. After Dallas Fuel's upset 3–1 win over the Los Angeles Valiant on June 15, Philadelphia needed a 4–0 sweep over the London Spitfire in order to make the Stage 4 Playoffs. While the Fusion were victorious in that matchup, they were only able to win by a score of 3–1 and subsequently, missed the Stage 4 Playoffs. Philadelphia Fusion claimed the 6th seed in the Season Playoffs on June 15, after Seoul Dynasty lost to the Los Angeles Gladiators.
Fusion defeated third-seeded Boston Uprising in the quarterfinals by two matches to one. The team went on to face the top-seeded New York Excelsior in the semifinals, a game the Fusion were considered heavy underdogs. Philadelphia dominated New York in the first match, winning three maps to zero, and took the second match by three maps to two.
Summary of results + Qualified playoffs teams Seed Team Division Record 1 New York Excelsior ATL 34–6 126–43–4 +83 2 Los Angeles Valiant PAC 27–13 100–64–7 +36 3 Boston Uprising ATL 26–14 99–71–3 +28 4 Los Angeles Gladiators PAC 25–15 96–72–3 +24 5 London Spitfire ATL 24–16 102–69–3 +33 6 Philadelphia Fusion ATL 24–16 93–80–2 +13
+ Quarterfinals Team Match 1 Match 2 Match 3 Match Wins (6) Philadelphia Fusion 3 1 3 2 (3) Boston Uprising 1 3 1 1 + Semifinals Team Match 1 Match 2 Match 3 Match Wins (6) Philadelphia Fusion 3 3 – 2 (1) New York Excelsior 0 2 – 0
+ Quarterfinals Team Match 1 Match 2 Match 3 Match Wins (5) London Spitfire 0 3 3 2 (4) Los Angeles Gladiators 3 0 0 1 + Semifinals Team Match 1 Match 2 Match 3 Match Wins (5) London Spitfire 3 3 – 2 (2) Los Angeles Valiant 1 0 – 0
Venue and ticketing
The Barclays Center in New York was selected as the 2018 OWL Grand Finals host venue on May 9, 2018. Overwatch League commissioner Nate Nanzer emphasized that two factors influenced the decision to select the Barclays Center as the grand finals host: the venue's location in a prominent global city and its world-class status. Nanzer also acknowledged the fervent fanbase of the New York Excelsior (NYXL), stating that the support from NYXL fans played a role in selecting New York as the host city. Opened in 2012, the $1 billion stadium has a capacity of about 19,000 and is used by the Brooklyn Nets of the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the New York Islanders of the National Hockey League (NHL). The arena has also hosted concerts, conventions and other sporting and entertainment events, including the 2013 NBA draft, the 2015 NBA All-Star Weekend, the 2016 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament, UFC 223, and the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards.
Ticket sales for the finals began on May 18, 2018. Two-day general admission tickets sold for $60. Fans also had the option to upgrade their packages. The "Grandmaster" package, priced at $75, and the "Master" package, priced at $40, offered exclusive perks, including the chance to take photos with Overwatch League players, attend meet-and-greets with players, and receive Overwatch League merchandise, or "swag". Within a few hours of being on sale, the Grandmaster package upgrades were entirely sold out, leaving only the General Admission tickets and the Master package upgrades. The remaining tickets for the event sold-out exactly two weeks later, leaving resell tickets in excess of $125.
Broadcast and viewership On the first day of the season playoffs, Disney and Blizzard announced a multi-year partnership that would bring the league and other professional Overwatch competitive events to ESPN, Disney XD, and ABC, starting with the playoffs and throughout all of the following season. The partnership marked the time that a live esports competition had aired on ESPN in prime time and the first time that an esports competition had aired on ABC.
The Nielsen ratings for the Grand Finals broadcasts on ESPN and ABC were relatively low compared to other programs that aired in similar time slots. The full Friday broadcast on ESPN received a 0.18 rating, while a later ESPN2 re-airing of digital coverage managed a 0.05 rating. ABC's Sunday afternoon recap achieved a 0.3 rating. These ratings, when translated into household estimates, indicated the viewership numbers as 215,280 households for the Friday broadcast on ESPN, 59,800 households for the Saturday re-airing on ESPN2, and 358,800 households for Sunday's recap on ABC. However, Nielsen estimates are based on television-owning households in the United States and don not provide a comprehensive view of viewership patterns. Additionally, comparing Nielsen ratings to concurrent viewers on platforms like Twitch, where Overwatch League's grand finals broadcasts garnered between 150,000 and 350,000 concurrent viewers, can be challenging as households and viewers are not equivalent.
According to a press release from Blizzard, the Overwatch League Grand Finals achieved a global viewership of 10.8million across the two days. This number was attained through a combination of officially partnered streaming platforms, including Twitch, ESPN, MLG, and Chinese partners ZhanQi TV, NetEase CC, and Panda TV. The Finals were also aired on South Korea's MBC network with a slight delay. Among all of these platforms, the average minute audience was reported to be 861,205 over both days. Blizzard reported that the United States accounted for 289,175 of the average minute viewers, encompassing both the Twitch stream and the ESPN broadcast. The remaining substantial portion of the audience hailed from international markets, with the Chinese market likely playing a significant role. Chinese streaming numbers can be intricate due to challenges such as botting, which involves creating fake users to inflate viewer numbers, and differences in metrics used by various websites to calculate the number of viewers.
+Telecast schedule Date Time (EDT) Event Network(s) Fri, July 27 7:00 p.m. Day 1 of Grand Finals ESPN Sat, July 28 4:30 p.m. Day 2 of Grand Finals Disney XD, ESPN3 Sat, July 28 9:00 p.m. Day 2 of Grand Finals ESPN2 (re-air) Sun, July 29 3:00 p.m. Highlights Recap ABC, ESPN3
Entertainment