Based in Santa Monica, California, United States, Activision Blizzard, Inc. was founded on July 9, 2008. The video game holding company includes five business units namely Activision Blizzard Studios, Activision Publishing, King, Major League Gaming and Blizzard Entertainment.
Blizzard Entertainment owned the Overwatch League, a professional esports league for the video game “Overwatch“, which was first released on May 24, 2016. “Overwatch 2” was released on October 4, 2022.
Headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA, technology corporation Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard on October 13, 2023. On November 8, 2023, the video game holding company announced that it is transitioning from the Overwatch League and evolving competitive Overwatch in a new direction.
“We are grateful to everyone who made OWL possible and remain focused on building our vision of a revitalized esports program”, an Activision Blizzard spokesperson told IGN. “We are excited to share details with you all in the near future.”
Run by Major League Gaming, the Overwatch League played out similar to most professional sports leagues in North America. All teams played scheduled games against other teams to vie for position in the season’s playoffs.
The league featured 20 teams split between two conferences based on their location. The West had 12 teams while East had eight.
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