Seagull Calls for the formation of an Overwatch Players Association

Former Overwatch pro Brandon “Seagull” Larned took to Twitter to discuss one of the major issues facing the Overwatch League during its offseason.

Teams are dropping players at a high rate and Seagull pointed out that the League needs a player’s association in order to protect their contracts and hold the organisations to account. He warns that, without an association, players are at risk of being dropped without warning.

Organisations like London Spitfire and Dallas Fuel have dropped the majority of their rosters after weak results this season. In fact, in just the past few days, over 13 players have already been dropped.

Because there is no player’s association, there are not many protections provided to pro-players. There are contractual requirements that each team must meet; payment, contract length, etc. Despite the contractual agreements, the players do not have a union or group that is fighting for them to push back against decisions made by the League or individual esports organisations. So, even though single players may have protection over their contract, they are still at the whims of the League as a whole.

Seagull also claims that the teams are reticent to make any sort of significant investment in current players because of the upcoming release of Overwatch 2. If there are major changes to the base game, high-level players may not be able to transfer their skills to the new game. Teams may be dropping players to save money for the upcoming changes to the Overwatch meta.

No matter what comes from this controversy, the esports betting scene will have a lot to look out for. What will happen if the player’s association forces teams to hold on to players that negatively impact their league standings? If October 24^th rolls around and teams do not rush to grab all the free agents that they can, will there be many changes to the League next year? What will happen if the teams start to lose focus on Overwatch and start to invest more in the as-yet unreleased Overwatch 2? We might see a decrease in Overwatch betting as the views and teams start to look towards the future.