• News

Overwatch League Stage Finals Move to Sunday Going Forward

The Overwatch League Stage Finals will now be held on Sundays for the rest of the season and beyond, with Blizzard responding to concerns over player and fan fatigue.

Ozzie Mejia

February 14, 2018 4:35 PM

2

The opening weeks of the Overwatch League has proven to be as much of a learning experience for Blizzard than anything else. As exciting as the Stage 1 Playoffs proved to be, there was some constructive criticism laid out from members of the press, Overwatch League viewers, and players themselves. Less than a week after the Stage 1 Finals, Blizzard has responded.

All Stage playoffs going forward will now be held on Sundays, starting at 1PM PT. As noted by the Overwatch League website, this is being done to prevent fatigue across the board. The eventual Stage 1 Champions, the London Spitfire, were the only team to play three times on Saturday. This move should also help logistically for certain scenarios. In particular, the Los Angeles Valiant was not scheduled to play on Saturday, however they had to be at the Blizzard Arena dressed and ready to go anyway, in the event that one of the tiebreaker scenarios went their way.

Fans that already purchased Saturday tickets for the final week of Stage 2, which is set to run on Saturday, March 24, will be eligible to attend the Sunday playoffs for no extra charge.

In addition to this, weekday and Saturday schedules now have standardized start times. Wednesday, Thursday, and Fridays will now kick off at 4PM PT, while Saturday's matches will kick off at 1PM PT.

Stage 2 of the Overwatch League is set to kick off on February 21.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?