Overwatch Commissioner: League's Appeal Lies in Local Teams
*By Jacqueline Corba*
The commissioner of the Overwatch League has some thoughts on what makes the esports competition so popular: attaching teams to cities to get fans excited.
"What you see in esports is the fandom around Overwatch Leagueーaround these cities. It manifests in exactly the same way that you see fandom manifest in traditional sports," said Nate Nanzer in an interview with Cheddar from the Cannes Lions festival Tuesday. "We wanted to make an esport league that was really easy to follow and really easy to be a fan of."
And so far the strategy seems to have worked. The league, which was announced just last January, has already [inked a $90 million, two-year](https://www.bizjournals.com/losangeles/news/2018/05/24/activision-blizzard-shops-new-deals-for-overwatch.html), exclusive deal with gaming site Twitch to stream all of the league's games. And the inaugural season's Grand Finals sold out more than 20,000 seats at Brooklyn's Barclays Center in a matter of days.
"We are excited to bring it to Brooklyn and show the biggest city in the world what kind of show we can put on," Nanzer said
Six of twelve teams in the league qualified for this season's playoffs: New York Excelsior, Los Angeles Valiant, Boston Uprising, Los Angeles Gladiators, London Spitfire, and Philadelphia Fusion. The Grand Finals take place July 27-July 28 at the [Barclay's Center](http://www.barclayscenter.com/events/detail/overwatch-league-grand-finals-2018).
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/inside-the-growth-of-esports).
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
