OWL winning GM spills the beans on behind-the-scenes rumours
Last week, the Overwatch League concluded, leaving on a cliffhanger about the future of the franchise league and the esport.
Amidst this uncertainty, tongues have been loosening, allowing those involved to be more open with the experiences they made and the stories that they've heard since OWL kicked off in 2018.
Having just won the sixth season, Florida Mayhem General Manager and President of Esports for Misfits, Albert "yeHHH" Yeh took to Twitch for a so-called "Leakathon." It was a tongue-in-cheek stream during which yeHHH talked about behind-the-scenes information about the last six years of professional Overwatch.
No new season info
At the forefront of everyone's minds after the emotional sendoff of Overwatch League, yeHHH shared that he had no new information about the future of Overwatch esports going forward.
During a quarterly earnings press release, Activision Blizzard disclosed that it was in the process of offering Overwatch League teams a termination fee of $6 million USD per franchise if it could not find enough support for a new operating agreement.
Since then, the League has established contact with third-party tournament organisers to plan for the future of the esport, with no concrete plans announced as of now. As yeHHH pointed out, there are still several steps to take before a more confident forecast for the future of Overwatch esports could be made.
"I honestly don’t know. All I’ve heard are rumours on what might happen after OWL. But the League isn’t dead yet. There needs to be an owner’s meeting, there needs to be a proposal on what OWL looks like, and the owners have to vote whether to stay in OWL or not."
The General Manager shared, "None of that has happened yet." When asked about his thoughts on the new system, yeHHH showed humility in his ability to give concrete ideas to a task as complex as a new competitive format. "Once we know what happens, I’ll have plenty of thoughts."
Six years of backroom chatter into six hours
For more than six hours, yeHHH sat down with his chat cycling with many prominent figures of the Overwatch League, such as former Dallas Fuel player Brandon "Seagull" Larned, stopping by to add to the conversation.
For the most part, the newly crowned champion talked about the history of his franchise and its path to success, disclosing behind-the-scenes information on the decision-making process of the team and his own during his career.
Outside of that, he tackled some of the most prominent rumours of the last six years, including some of the more recent behind-the-scenes topics such as the Los Angeles Gladiators' post-Midseason collapse and the scrim meta prior to the season playoffs, which led to the controversial pickups of Lee "WhoRU" Seung-jun and Shin "BERNAR" Se-won.
On the competitiveOverwatch subreddit, users added their summary of the six-hour stream. The VOD of the broadcast is available on yeHHH’s Twitch channel. yeHHH joined the Florida Mayhem as an Overwatch analyst and worked himself up the ladder, later becoming the General Manager of the franchise.
Under his leadership, the franchise turned from one of the most underwhelming performers in the first two seasons into a champion in the most recent season, showing incremental improvements over the seasons once he took over.
